In a joint submission on the third of November, CA ANZ and CPA Australia provided feedback to the Economic Legislation Committee inquiry (The committee inquiry) into Corporations Amendment (Meetings and Documents) Bill 2021 [Provisions].

In our submission we reiterate the issues raised in our previous submissions to Treasury, which are to consider: 

• an overarching framework extending the ability to provide meeting-related documents electronically to the Insolvency Practice Rules (Corporations) 2016
• the company tax residence definition under current Australian income tax law
• a “digital first” approach to reflect the transition to electronic communications whilst retaining a hard-copy option by choice, and
• a roadmap that clearly outlines and ‘connects the dots’ to other existing and future projects being carried out by Government, such as Director ID, MyGovID, modernising business communications and modernising document execution

The committee inquiry released their report in November 2021 with the joint accounting bodies submission mentioned at point 2.22:

‘CPA Australia and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand ('the Major Accounting Bodies') noted their support for the bill reiterating their previous position that all these amendments need to be considered 'as part of the overarching digital strategy, a roadmap that clearly outlines and connects the dots to other existing and future projects being carried out by government, such as, Director ID, MyGovID, modernising business communications and modernising document execution'