Advivo Business Advisors and Accountants explain the new changes to ATO correspondence.
For years, Advivo (like most accounting firms) has been receiving correspondence from the ATO and other relevant government bodies on behalf of our clients, which we peruse before sending on to you. However, we are now more commonly finding that this information is bypassing us and being sent to you directly, usually via myGov access or Business Portals. This inconsistency in communication leaves us uncertain on where we stand with the flow of your important documents and increases the likelihood of these documents being missed as there are more potential sources of documentation to be checked.
Historically, much of the mail we have received has been straightforward, and you’ve easily been able to activate it without needing our input. In other words, there has been little value in this process other than to provide us with a copy of what you receive along the way.
Fast forward to now and we can generally access a copy of this mail by manually searching your ATO records. However, this process is time-consuming, and we are conscious of minimising our costs and ensuring that we only do tasks that are delivering real value to you. That is, after all, what we preach to our clients when we advise on business processes.
Because of this, Advivo will soon be moving to update addresses for all mail from the ATO and other regular bodies we receive on your behalf to go directly to you. Don’t worry, we will let you know when this happens.
Of course, we are still here to answer any questions you may have with mail relating to your tax and accounting affairs – this will not change. We are focused on continuing to help you in the best way we can, which is not acting as a mail agent for the ATO.
Please find below some information on how you can go about accessing your ATO records electronically if you are not already.
How to access your ATO records:
Your activity statements are accessible through the Business Portal. Activity statements will still go to this portal even if you don’t have access to it.
If you haven’t already, you will need to create a myGovID and link it to the entities you wish to access on the Business Portal.
myGovID is a digital identification app that can be used to securely sign in to government services.
To create one, please follow the ATO’s instructions listed here.
How to link an entity:
Once your myGovID is set up, you will be able to link your entities in the Relationship Authorisation Manager (RAM). You can only link an entity if you are a principal authority like a sole trader, trustee or director.
Currently, the only way you can link an entity is to call 1300 287 539 and select option 3.
As soon as you’ve linked your entities, you will receive notifications of your activity statements and will be able to lodge them through the Business Portal.
