Question
Skeeter Kline & Partners is a medium-sized firm of accountants that is located in the inner-western suburbs . The Australian Taxation Office has been auditing
Skeeter Kline & Partners is a medium-sized firm of accountants that is located in the inner-western suburbs . The Australian Taxation Office has been auditing one of its major clients NURoticCo Ltd, a construction company as it suspects that it has been involved in schemes to avoid tax. Written requests from the ATO to Skeeter Kline & Partners for more information on NURoticCo Ltd have not yielded satisfactory results, nor have interviews with NURoticCo Ltds company officers, as many questions were not answered properly. At 8:30am on 23 January 2015, a team of ATO investigators attended the premises of Skeeter Kline & Partners without prior warning. They seek access to taxation working papers held by them, relating to work done for NURoticCo Ltd. While some of the working papers related to the preparation of NURoticCos tax return for the year ended 30 June 2013, other documentation related to advice on three new road construction projects and a restructuring of the corporate organization. Prepare a short report advising Skeeter Kline & Partners which addresses the following matters: Is it obliged to provide access to the information requested? Are the ATO investigators within their rights to enter the offices of Skeeter Kline & Partners? Can staff of Skeeter Kline & Partners legally prevent the ATO investigators from entering at this time? An associate partner of the firm, who was present in the office at the time, claims that some documents are commercial in confidence and others and protected by legal privilege, and these cannot be examined by the ATO investigators. Is he correct? If Skeeter Kline & Partners does not comply with the request for access, could it be exposing itself to penalties?
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