Today marks the start of a new system at the ATO that may impact you at some time in the future.

This change is designed to strengthen the security of your online services by ensuring that only the correct registered agents have access to your Tax and Super details.

From today if a Tax or BAS Agent need to add you to their ATO portal in order to lodge Returns and Activity Statements on your behalf they cannot do so before you ‘nominate’ them as your Agent through your ATO online services business portal.

This change while being made for valid reasons has the potential to disrupt agents linkage to your business with the ATO and could lead to delays in lodgements.

What urgent action do you need to take right now?

No urgent action is needed by you at present, however should your business be inadvertently removed from your agents ATO portal, they will contact you and request you to action the Agent Nomination step in your ATO online services business portal.

What can you do to be prepared should you be asked by us to nominate us as your Agent?

If you don’t have access to ATO online services for your business, a step you could take now would be to set this up.  You will need a myGovID for this. Here is a link to the ATO website on how to setup access for your business  Set up your access to Online services for business | Australian Taxation Office (ato.gov.au)

What have we done to make this as pain free as possible for you?

We have created a Cheat Sheet that you can download, save or print and place somewhere handy to refer to if ever needed.  This takes you through the step on how to Nominate your Agent.

Our industry expect some bumps in the transition of this new ATO system and ask for your patience and co-operation in advance to avoid as little disruption to lodgements as possible.