The Australian Financial Review’s Fleur Anderson reported today on an internal ATO memo to staff. The memo said “We are currently exploring a new initiative for undertaking assurance work through the External Compliance Assurance Process (ECAP) project…This approach will look at how we might use the capabilities of accounting professionals, who are registered company auditors, to conduct certain assurance reviews on our behalf.”

This is an interesting development, but the report does not indicate whether the ATO would engage and pay the external auditor, or that corporate taxpayers would be expected to do so as part of their tax risk mitigation processes.

If the ATO was to engage the corporation’s existing auditor, that would raise ethical Read More