How to check that your tax agent is registered with the TPB

The Tax Practitioners Board maintains a public register of registered tax and BAS agents. It also contains details of certain unregistered entities and individuals, along with breaches of the Code of Professional Conduct and sanctions that are on the public record. The TPB public register page offers two ways in: Search the TPB Register, and Find a tax practitioner near you.

The second option, Find a tax practitioner near you, is a geo-location search: it looks for registered practitioners up to 75 km from an address you enter.

What must appear on the register is prescribed by the Tax Agent Services Regulations 2022 — it is not left to the practitioner. Knowing what each field means is the difference between “the name came up” and an actual check.

Sanctions do not quietly disappear. Other than a written caution, a sanction stays on the register for the longer of five years from the day it takes effect or the period it is in force, with the reasons included. A practitioner whose registration is terminated stays on the register for five years, showing the date of effect, any period during which they cannot re-apply, and the reasons.

Generally, only registered tax and BAS agents can charge or receive a fee or other reward for providing tax agent, BAS or tax (financial) advice services. So registration is not a badge a practitioner chooses to collect — for paid work it is the entry requirement.

A registered tax agent is bound by the Code of Professional Conduct in the Tax Agent Services Act 2009. The Code’s principles fall under five categories: honesty and integrity; independence (which the Code frames as acting lawfully in the client’s best interests and managing conflicts of interest); confidentiality; competence (including taking reasonable care to ascertain a client’s state of affairs and to apply the taxation laws correctly); and other responsibilities, including maintaining the required professional indemnity insurance and advising clients of their rights and obligations under the taxation laws.

Professional indemnity (PI) insurance must be maintained throughout registration. The TPB describes it as a consumer protection mechanism — cover to compensate clients who suffer loss because of an act, error or omission arising from the services provided. For tax agents, the TPB’s minimum aggregate cover is tiered by business turnover, as set out on its PI insurance page (last modified 30 April 2026):

Failing to maintain PI insurance that meets the TPB’s requirements breaches the Code and can result in termination of registration.

Both are TPB registrations, but they are not interchangeable: a registered BAS agent can only provide some of the services a tax agent is registered to provide. A BAS service relates to ascertaining or advising about liabilities, obligations or entitlements under a “BAS provision” — the GST law, PAYG, fuel tax, luxury car tax, wine tax and the FBT collection provisions — or representing a client in dealings with the Commissioner of Taxation about a BAS provision. TPB legislative instruments extend that scope to certain superannuation guarantee and payroll-related services.

In practice: if someone is preparing and lodging your income tax return for a fee, the register entry should show a tax agent registration. If they are lodging your BAS for a fee, a BAS agent registration covers that work. Providing — or even advertising — tax agent or BAS services for a fee or reward while unregistered attracts significant civil penalties.

• They may not be a fit and proper person, and may not hold the qualifications or experience the TPB requires.
• If they lodge late, or make a false or misleading statement that results in a tax shortfall, the ATO may impose administrative penalties on you — the taxpayer — not on them.
• You have no safe harbour protection from certain administrative penalties.
• They may hold no professional indemnity insurance, so there may be nothing behind a claim if their work causes you loss.

The safe harbour provisions administered by the ATO are the sharpest illustration. A client of a registered tax or BAS agent may, in certain circumstances, not be liable for a failure-to-lodge-on-time penalty or a false-or-misleading-statement penalty resulting in a shortfall. It is not automatic: for the failure-to-lodge penalty you must show you gave your agent all relevant tax information in time to lodge by the due date, and the failure must not have resulted from the agent’s recklessness or intentional disregard of a taxation law — and the taxpayer carries the burden of proof. Engage an unregistered preparer and that pathway is simply not available.

This is enacted law, not a proposal. The Tax Agent Services (Code of Professional Conduct) Determination 2024 — a legislative instrument registered on 2 July 2024, and later amended by the government following consultation — added obligations to the Code. They applied from 1 January 2025 for larger practices and from 1 July 2025 for practitioners with 100 or fewer employees, so they are in force for every registered practitioner today.

Section 45 of the Determination — Keeping your clients informed — requires registered practitioners to advise all current and prospective clients, in writing and in a prominent, clear and unambiguous way, of the following.

• That the TPB maintains a public register of tax and BAS agents, and how to access and search it — the TPB recommends practitioners provide a direct link to their own register entry.
• How to make a complaint to the TPB.
• General information about their rights, responsibilities and obligations.
• Certain prescribed events from the previous five years (events before 1 July 2022 are excluded).
• Whether their registration is subject to any conditions.

If you have never received that information from a paid tax preparer, that is itself worth noticing — and worth checking on the register.

We would rather you checked than took our word for it. Eternity Group Accountants operates as a registered tax agent under TPB registration 25523469. Enter that number in the Registration Number field on the TPB Register search and select Find: the entry returned shows the registered company that holds the registration, the practitioner type (Tax Agent) and the registration status. A search performed on 12 July 2026 returned a status of Registered.

If something ever goes wrong, our complaints process sets out how to raise it with us and where else you can take it. The Code also requires us to tell you that the TPB runs its own complaints process — both for concerns about a registered practitioner, and for anyone advertising or providing tax agent or BAS services for a fee while unregistered. You can read more about how the practice is structured and registered on our about page.