Only 1% of Accounting Practices Provide Tax Planning Services

For the year ended 30th June 2018, 42,561 tax agents (RTA) and 19,550 tax (financial) advisers generated $330 million in tax planning revenue. This means tax planning accounted for 7.5% of the year’s $4.4 billion tax services revenue.

Over 90% of tax planning revenue is generated by the 100 largest accounting practices. In contrast, less than 1% of suburban accounting practices actually provide tax planning services to their clients.

The 3 main reasons suburban accounting practices don’t provide tax planning services are:

1. Never been trained – there are limited training courses available.
2. Don’t have any tax planning software – Australia has limited software options. This is to be contrasted with America where there are 20 different companies providing tax planning software.
3. Involves creativity and problem solving – many accountants just prefer to put numbers in boxes without thinking too much.