
Compliance for Accountants has formally responded to HMRC‘s consultation on strengthening the regulatory framework in order to raise standards in tax advice. Our response (below) is focused on upholding the public interest, and the main points raised in our response are as follows:
Many tax advisers who are not members of a professional body have the necessary knowledge and experience to serve their clients well. Nevertheless, we are supportive of the proposal that all tax practitioners should be regulated by a professional body.
Professional standards, including a code of ethics, are more important than an accountancy qualification, as it is an accountant’s ethical responsibility to ensure they are competent to provide the services they offer.
A professional body has the right to choose whether to admit an applicant into membership (subject to the professional body’s constitution).
Full membership of a professional body is not essential to being regulated by that body.
A recognised professional body must be subject to appropriate oversight.
Membership of a professional body provides access to guidance and support that adds value to the regulatory framework. This could be made available to affiliated tax practitioners who are not full members of the professional body.
A professional body’s regulatory functions must be independent of its representative functions.
Regulatory overlap must be minimised and HMRC should not gather information that would already be held by an effective professional body regulator.
The need for transparency extends to the performance of recognised professional bodies. This would enable taxpayers to choose in which tax practitioners and professional bodies they will place their trust.
Should HMRC’s proposals be implemented, perhaps the greatest challenge for HMRC and the recognised professional bodies would be to ensure that substandard tax practitioners who do not seek to raise their standards exit the market and are prevented from practising illegally.
We believe that the costs of implementing HMRC’s proposals will be outweighed by the value of enhanced clarity and greater trust in tax practitioners. This, in turn, will lead to taxation advice being more easily accessible by the public.
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