TPB Code of Professional Conduct in Daily Practice

The TPB Code of Professional Conduct sets the duties registered tax and BAS agents must follow in their personal and professional conduct. Turn each duty into a file check, a staff instruction or a recorded decision before work leaves your practice.

The Code Obligations Grouped by Theme

The Code has 17 items in section 30-10 of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009. Item 17 also requires compliance with the additional obligations in the Code Determination. The table gives a practical action for each statutory item, using short descriptions rather than reproducing the legislation.

Theme	Item and duty	Action in your practice
Honesty and integrity	1. Act honestly and with integrity	Refuse an unsupported claim and record why.
Honesty and integrity	2. Comply with taxation laws personally	Keep your own returns and payments up to date.
Honesty and integrity	3. Account for client property held on trust	Reconcile receipts and payments and give the client an account.
Independence	4. Act lawfully in the client’s best interests	Recommend the service the client needs despite a lower fee.
Independence	5. Manage conflicts of interest	Check related parties before accepting work.
Confidentiality	6. Obtain permission unless disclosure is legally required	Record who may receive client information.
Competence	7. Provide competent services	Assign a reviewer with the skills for the job.
Competence	8. Maintain relevant knowledge and skills	Match training to your actual services.
Competence	9. Establish relevant client affairs with reasonable care	Query figures that contradict source documents.
Competence	10. Apply taxation laws with reasonable care	Record the law and reasoning behind advice.
Other responsibilities	11. Do not knowingly obstruct tax administration	Preserve requested records and address lawful enquiries.
Other responsibilities	12. Explain relevant client rights and obligations	Explain record keeping and review rights for the service.
Other responsibilities	13. Maintain required professional indemnity insurance	Check cover and renewal before it expires.
Other responsibilities	14. Respond properly to the TPB	Allocate each request and track its response deadline.
Other responsibilities	15. Do not use a disqualified entity you know or reasonably ought to know about without TPB approval	Screen staff and contractors and retain any approval.
Other responsibilities	16. Avoid prohibited arrangements with disqualified entities	Examine referral and service arrangements before proceeding.
Other responsibilities	17. Follow determined Code obligations	Keep the additional duties in your procedures.

The Code applies to registered individuals and registered company or partnership firms. A registered employee has personal obligations, while a registered firm has its own obligations. A practice principal cannot transfer those duties to an unregistered employee by putting their name on a checklist. Read the Tax Agent Services Act guide for the wider registration framework.

Honesty, Independence and Conflicts of Interest

Acting honestly means refusing to lodge a claim you know is false, even when the client insists that a previous accountant allowed it. Ask for the facts and evidence supporting the deduction. Explain the lawful treatment and record the client’s response. An aggressive position needs a defensible basis in the law, not confidence from the client.

Keep your own interests separate from the client’s interests. In a fictional example, a client needs a straightforward BAS correction. Recommending a larger advisory engagement solely to earn a higher fee conflicts with acting lawfully in that client’s best interests. Explain what the correction requires and agree its scope.

A conflict can arise before acceptance or during an engagement. Acting for spouses who separate creates competing interests and risks disclosing one spouse’s information to the other. Two related companies can also have different interests in the allocation of a transaction. Shared ownership does not make their interests identical.

Use a written conflict of interest policy that tells staff how to identify conflicts and who decides whether you can act. It must cover disclosure, permission and practical safeguards, with a clear route to decline or end work when you cannot manage the conflict. Client consent alone does not remove your duty to assess the conflict.

A small practice’s conflict of interest register can use these fields.

Field	What to record
Clients and matter	Each entity affected and the work proposed
Conflict	The competing interests, including your own financial interest
Assessment	Why the conflict can or cannot be managed
Disclosure	What each client was told and the permission obtained
Safeguards	Separate staff, restricted files or limits on the work
Decision	The approving registered agent and reasons
Review trigger	A dispute, ownership change or new service that requires reassessment

Check new client form answers for related entities, existing clients on the other side of a transaction and personal connections to staff. Escalate a separation or dispute before accepting instructions for both parties. The TPB’s conflicts guidance explains the duty to manage actual and potential conflicts.

Confidentiality and Client Information

Client confidentiality requires permission before you disclose client affairs to a third party, unless a legal duty requires the disclosure. The TPB’s confidentiality guidance includes outsourcing and cloud storage within this duty.

At onboarding, tell the client which cloud providers will hold their information and why. For offshore or outsourced work, identify the recipient and location and explain what work the provider will do. Obtain permission before sending information. Treat a previous accountant and another adviser as separate recipients whose involvement needs authority.

Record permission in the engagement letter or a consent form. State the information covered, the recipients and the purpose. Keep the response with the client file and check it when the recipient or purpose changes. The consent authority guide covers how to write that authority.

A well-meant email to a spouse, adult child or bank can breach confidentiality when you have neither permission nor a legal duty. Confirm the authority before sending the information. A person who pays the fee does not automatically gain access to the client’s affairs.

When disclosure is required by law, record the requirement and disclose the information it covers. Breach reporting can engage this exception. Separate a compulsory notice from an informal request for information.

Reasonable Care and Staying Competent

Reasonable care means checking the client information relevant to the service and investigating answers that appear wrong. You do not need to audit every client. You do need to make enquiries proportionate to the circumstances, as the TPB’s reasonable care guidance explains.

In a fictional example, the client reports business income but the bank statements show larger unexplained deposits. Ask what the difference represents and retain the explanation and supporting records. Do not silently treat every deposit as income or ignore the discrepancy.

Confirm who your client is and which entity carries on the activity before applying tax rules. A director, company and trustee can each have different roles. An ABN match alone does not establish the identity or authority of the person instructing you. Use the tax-agent client verification guide for the separate identity and authority checks.

Competence requires the knowledge and skill to carry out the service correctly. Continuing professional education helps maintain that knowledge, but attendance alone cannot make you competent in an unfamiliar area. Get appropriate specialist help or decline work beyond your competence. Review new services against staff skills before assigning them.

The same duty applies when software prepares an answer. Decide whether the output fits the client’s facts and the law. The TPB AI guidance guide applies those duties to AI tools.

Keeping Clients Informed and a Document Retention Policy

The Code Determination requires written client information about the TPB register, complaints and the general rights and obligations of both parties. Give those details upon engagement or re-engagement and when the client makes a relevant request. Keep the information prominent and understandable.

Prescribed historical events include non-interim suspension or termination, specified convictions and other events listed in section 45. The usual lookback is five years, subject to the instrument’s application and transitional rules. Disclose relevant events at an enquiry to engage or re-engage. For an existing client not already advised, the historical-event rule requires notice within 30 days of the event.

Current registration conditions and suspension have a different timing rule. Disclose them at an enquiry to engage or re-engage. Inform an existing client not already advised as soon as reasonably practicable after the event. The current Determination sets out the event categories and timing, including the 2026 amendments.

A document retention policy must distinguish your service records from the client’s underlying tax records. Under the TPB service-record rule, keep records for at least five years after the service is completed. Record the nature, scope and outcome, information considered and advice exchanged. For complex advice, retain the facts, assumptions and reasoning, including the calculation basis.

The Australian Taxation Office generally requires individuals to keep written evidence for five years from lodging the return it supports. Different records can require longer retention. Keep capital gains purchase records through ownership and the relevant period after disposal. Carried-forward losses can also require records beyond five years. Use the ATO’s record guidance for the record category involved.

Set a practice policy that retains each client file until at least both applicable five-year periods have expired. Apply longer legal requirements and hold records needed for an unresolved dispute. Avoid an automatic deletion rule based only on when the client left.

Policy area	Decision to document
Records kept	Engagements, consent, verification notes, advice, source evidence and review records
Retention trigger	Service completion, return lodgment or the record’s specific legal trigger
Storage	Approved locations, backups and the ability to retrieve readable records
Access	Staff permissions and who can approve a disclosure
Longer holds	Losses, assets, disputes and other obligations that postpone destruction
Destruction	Approval, secure disposal and a record of what was destroyed

Keep compliance records that explain your own actions, including conflicts decisions and staff sign-offs. Those records have a different purpose from the client’s receipts. Identity-check notes also have their own retention trigger. Do not keep copies of identity documents merely because a service file needs a verification record.

Supervising Unregistered Staff and Contractors

Proper supervision means directing, overseeing and checking tax or BAS services provided on your behalf. The TPB’s supervision guidance requires attention to staff knowledge and skills, the services provided and your quality management system. The amount of supervision must fit the work and its risk.

Make a supervision procedure that identifies the registered supervisor and the work each person can do. Set escalation points for unfamiliar questions and require review before lodgment. Keep the review comments and final sign-off so the file shows who approved it. Training logs must show the learning relevant to the work assigned.

A contractor does not need to be your employee for supervision duties to apply. The same assessment covers offshore staff and outsourced providers working on your behalf. Your review needs access to the work and enough time to test it. Read the outsourcing accounting work guide for that arrangement’s wider requirements.

Do not let an unregistered person present themselves as a registered agent or independently lodge under your identity. Use authorised staff access with actual supervision. Lending your registration number and signing work you have never overseen does not establish supervision and control.

Advertising Your Services and Registration

Advertising must describe your registration and services accurately. The integrity duty applies to public claims, while the Determination’s specific false-statement rules concern statements to government agencies. Do not treat those specific rules as an advertising-only provision.

Remove guaranteed refund promises and invented reviews. Explain fee claims accurately, including what work the advertised fee covers. A headline suggesting every client qualifies for the same refund can mislead even when small print adds qualifications.

Show the legal registered entity, its TPB registration number and whether it is a tax agent or BAS agent. Match any stated services to the registration and its conditions. A BAS agent registration does not authorise advertising income tax return preparation as the BAS agent’s own service. The TPB’s practitioner information explains how registration type and number help clients check the register.

Review old directory listings, email signatures and social profiles when registration details or conditions change. Assign someone to maintain that list. Remove claims that imply registration still permits work during a suspension.

The 2024 Code Determination

Eight additional obligations apply through Code item 17 under the 2024 Determination. They apply to small practices as well as larger firms. The earlier application period for larger firms was a transition, not a permanent exemption for smaller practices.

Additional obligation	Practical change
Uphold and promote professional ethical standards	Give staff a route to raise concerns and act on them.
Address false or misleading statements	Record corrections and follow the required escalation rules.
Manage conflicts in government activities	Document material real or apparent conflicts and disclose them to the agency.
Maintain confidentiality in government dealings	Follow authorised disclosure and use restrictions for agency information.
Keep proper client records	Make a retrievable service record with a retention trigger.
Ensure services provided on your behalf are competent	Record staff skills and suitable supervision.
Establish a quality management system	Document, enforce and review practice procedures.
Keep clients informed	Update engagement information and event notifications.

The instrument commenced in 2024, with the original obligations applying to practices in 2025 under two employee-based application rules. The test uses the prescribed historical employee count and connected-practice rules, not simply today’s headcount. The Determination’s application provisions identify the exact boundaries. Later amendments also change the disclosure requirements for specified events and current registration status.

For a small practice, update the engagement letter and consent wording first. Then document supervision and file retention, and allocate responsibility for monitoring compliance. A sole practitioner still needs documented quality management procedures. Keep the procedure usable for an actual job, including who checks it and what happens when a check fails.

When the Code is Breached

A Code breach can lead to a written caution, an order to take specified action, suspension or termination of registration. Orders can require training or supervised work, restrict services or require client notification. The Act also provides for Court-imposed civil penalties. These consequences are separate from fixing an incorrect client return.

Registered agents must report their own significant breaches and qualifying significant breaches by other registered agents. A significant breach includes specified offences or actual or likely material loss. Repeated breaches or inadequate compliance arrangements can also satisfy the test.

Notify the TPB in writing within 30 days of first having, or being expected to have, reasonable grounds to believe the significant breach occurred. Reporting another agent can also require notification to their relevant recognised professional association. A suspicion without a factual basis is different from reasonable grounds. The TPB’s breach reporting guidance sets out the tests and the conduct covered by the reporting regime.

Keep an internal breach register with the facts, affected services, significance assessment and reporting decision. Record when reasonable grounds arose and the deadline, any corrective action and the report reference. Give staff a named person to contact and an alternative route when the concern involves that person. At induction, work through one fictional discrepancy and have staff explain when to stop work and escalate it.