The Australian Tax Office has change the process for a company or a trust to appoint a tax agent in Australia from 13 November 2023.
I will describe the process here. Â Don’t for one minute think I like it because I don’t like it one bit!
AÂ – Get My Gov ID
Most of us will have that from when we had to obtain a director’s ID at the end of 2022.
If you need the steps click here to read how to set up MyGovID
B – Appoint your income tax agent from My Gov ID
The ATO has brought in stricter requirements for tax agents around adding in clients that have an ABN (excluding sole traders) to our ATO Portal to access their records. This is in order to strengthen the security of the process and prevent fraud.
As of 13 November 2023, a new client must first use the ATO online services to nominate their agent before we add the client to our ATO Portal.
What does this mean for you?Â
As you are a new client of our firm, you will need to take some steps to setup a digital identity, link your ABN and nominate us as an authorised agent.
This needs to be done for each entity with an ABN that you are engaging us to work on behalf of.
This will take about 20 minutes to half an hour providing there are no complications.
Here is an infographic from the ATO with the instructions on how to link everything. Unfortunately, until we are nominated and this processed has been completed, we are unable to liaise with the ATO on your behalf.
We can help/watch you via team viewer or zoom but you have to do it yourself.
1. Set up your Digital Identity (myGovID)
For more help setting up your myGovID, please go to https://www.mygovid.gov.au/setup
2. Â Link
Link your myGovID to your ABN on the Relationship Authorisation Manager at https://info.authorisationmanager.gov.au/get-started
For each of your entities that have an ABN (excluding sole traders), you will need to link your myGovID to the ABN
Here you need to login on the top right of the screen and then put in your personal details (address) and then tick the entities you are authorised on.
3. Log in to Online Services for business at https://ato.gov.au/OSB
4. Nominate us as the authorised agent in Online services for business – You will need our Tax Agent Number of 24 675 623
5. Let us know when done. We will have 7 days to action the nomination however we are not notified by the ATO that it is ready.
For more information about this process, the ATO have a help page here.
The  ATO reference is at https://www.ato.gov.au/Tax-professionals/Digital-services/In-detail/Client-agent-linking-steps/
If you are struggling to complete the process, call us and we attempt to help, but we are not allowed to do it for you.
