The Tax Ombudsman has released its review of the ATO’s Online Services for Agents (OSfA), finding that the platform does not fully meet the needs of registered tax agents and that its current limitations are contributing to unnecessary administrative burden for practitioners, taxpayers and the ATO. The review also supported members’ concerns and experiences, as raised in CA ANZ’s submission to the review.

The review found that, while OSfA is central to daily practice operations, many common tasks still cannot be completed online. As a result, agents are often required to call the registered agent phone line or use manual workarounds to obtain information the ATO already holds digitally. The report found these limitations increase practice costs, reduce productivity and create avoidable delays for taxpayers.

It also identified a substantial backlog of proposed OSfA improvements within the ATO, with almost 100 system changes awaiting action and some outstanding since before 2022.

The review made three recommendations. First, the ATO should improve OSfA’s self-service functionality so agents can access more complete client information and complete more transactions online. This includes better communication histories, expanded online lodgement options, improved practice-level reporting, access to additional client account information and automatic redaction of tax file numbers from OSfA documents.

In particular, the report recommended expanding OSfA so agents can access FBT client lists and digitally lodge requests for franking credits refunds for non-profit organisations. It also recommended allowing agents to initiate requests digitally even where ATO staff still need to manually process them, including payment plans over $200,000 and credit transfers between client accounts.

Second, the ATO should give greater weight to registered tax agent needs when making technology investment decisions, strengthen internal representation of the agent experience and improve transparency about how digital service priorities are set.

Third, the ATO should develop secure two-way digital communication for agents and make practical short-term improvements to Practice Mail while longer-term solutions are progressed.

The ATO agreed to all three recommendations. It has also acknowledged work already underway, including engagement with agents through a working group (which CA ANZ is a member) and planned digital service improvements as part of its future information and communications technology strategy.

CA ANZ welcomes the Tax Ombudsman’s recommendations and the ATO’s response. The recommendations respond to issues that have been consistently raised by members. However, it is disappointing that the review did not recommend giving agents the ability to track the progress of lodgements, objections and ruling requests, as phoning the ATO to track these items absorbs a significant about of unrecoverable tax practitioner and ATO time.