Chartered Accountants Ireland responded to the latest consultations on proposals to regulate tax advisors. The Institute’s response will be published in the July edition of tax.point.

The latest consultation was titled “Raising standards in the tax advice market: professional indemnity insurance and defining tax advice”. The Government published its response to the tax advisers consultation which Chartered Accountants Ireland contributed to in summer 2020. The direction of the Government’s response broadly agreed with the Institute’s recommendation of compulsory professional indemnity insurance as reflected in the latest consultation.

The consultation asked the following key questions:-

• If the government introduces the requirement for professional indemnity insurance, what further steps would you recommend?
• Are there any other costs you foresee for advisers?
• What are your experiences of obtaining professional indemnity insurance or of the market for professional indemnity insurance?
• What are your views on the government’s proposals for making information on promoters public?
• What activities should it be mandatory to cover, and why?
• Should the government specify what advice must be covered by the policy? What advice do you think should be covered?
• Who should be required to hold the insurance? Should it be the firm, the principal, everyone who is acting as a tax adviser?
• The Government intends to model the definition of who the requirement will apply to on one of the definitions currently in legislation.
• What a) benefits and b) issues are there with using the Dishonest Tax Agent definition or the Money Laundering regulations definition?
• What benefits or issues would there be in considering the financial services regulatory distinction between advice and guidance for tax advice?
• The Government’s ambition is for HMRC to share information about the adviser with the client digitally. What are your views of this?

All the questions are set out here of the consultation.