Since November 13th 2023, the ATO no longer permits tax agents to assign themselves as the tax agent for your body corporate. The tax agent can only become the organisation’s agent after an authorised person of the body corporate has nominated the tax agent in the ATO online portal.
If your body corporate doesn’t have a current tax agent, and you want to contact the ATO or you want to appoint a tax agent, this might be a huge problem for you. The problem arises if the ATO recorded authorised contacts are no longer known to the committee or no longer cooperating with the committee. The ATO will only accept changes to contacts when the form NAT 2943 is signed by an authorised contact that is recorded in the ATO system.
If you have a body corporate manager, you will generally find that the principal of the BCM company has been appointed the public officer and the tax agent has updated the ATO records to reflect the change. So, before you transition to self management, make sure that you appoint authorised persons from the committee and make sure the existing tax agent updates the ATO records through the ATO online portal or the existing public officer updates the ATO records using form NAT 2943.
Tracsafe is trying to make things better. Have a read of the complaints letter that we have submitted to ATO.