Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
This was even though the former PwC partner told the professional body he was “subject to an investigation” by the tax agents’ regulator.
Mr Collins’ disclosure about the Tax Practitioners Board investigation into his activities while at PwC in his November 2022 resignation email should have triggered a process at CA ANZ that flagged his membership and prevented him from resigning before the body investigated.
Peter Collins, former head of international tax for PwC Australia.
The error meant that Mr Collins, who was deregistered by the TPB for two years last January and has since been banned from providing financial services for eight years by the corporate regulator, could not be investigated by the accounting body.
It also means that senior executives of the professional body inaccurately told two parliamentary inquiries they only found out about TPB investigation into Mr Collins after it was first by The Australian Financial Review last January.
The error was discovered after Mr Collins emailed CA ANZ chief executive Ainslie van Onselen last Sunday, February 25, to inform her of the existence of his November 2022 resignation letter with its TPB investigation. On Tuesday, she wrote to the two committees to correct the body’s testimony and to explain how Mr Collins had been mistakenly allowed to resign.
The debacle is another blow to the professional body’s ongoing attempts to reform its disciplinary processes so that it is seen by its members, the parliament and the public as capable of policing chartered accountants, a group which include the partners of the big four consulting firms Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC. The body has since changed its rules to prevent former members from escaping investigation over alleged misconduct.
It also comes after ASIC chairman Joe Longo told parliament that the corporate regulator only has oversight of a “sliver” of the services provided by the big four because partnerships are not covered by federal corporate laws. This mistake will serve to add further weight to a growing push to bring the big four under federal laws.
‘No flag on his record’
Ms van Onselen’s wrote that “human error” by CA ANZ’s membership team “erroneously” allowed Mr Collins to cancel his membership despite his resignation email specifying that he was being investigated by the TPB.
“On the evening of Sunday, 25 February 2024, I received an email directly from Mr Collins, where he shared with me this correspondence dated 16 November 2022 which he sent to the generic CA ANZ email address used for Membership and Admissions queries and requests,” she wrote.
“The existence of this correspondence was not previously known to...me. Because Mr Collins had not disclosed via the proper channels, there was no flag on his record, which means his resignation was not properly assessed nor brought to the attention of the Professional Conduct Committee, nor to line managers.
Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand CEO Ainslie van Onselen. Christopher Pearce
Mr Collins’ email was sent on the same day the TPB made its findings into his actions and actions by PwC relating to the tax leaks matter.
The TPB took the unprecedented step of terminating his registration as a tax agent after a lengthy investigation found he had shared secret information about the government’s tax plans to other partners and staff at PwC, despite signing a series of confidentiality agreements with Treasury from 2013 to 2018.
In her letter, Ms van Onselen wrote that Mr Collins had not submitted a formal ‘Notification Event’ about his TPB investigation as required by the body’s bylaws. Instead, he “had disclosed he was subject to an investigation from the TPB via an informal channel” in his resignation email.
“While Mr Collins did not disclose the TPB findings against him to the PCC as required by the CA ANZ By-Laws, he had provided a disclosure in a resignation letter received and processed by the Membership and Admissions team...in late November 2022,” she wrote.
CA ANZ is unable to reverse Mr Collins’ resignation. Instead, Ms van Onselen wrote the body has already put a ‘stop resignation’ notification on the unspecified number of current and former PwC Australia partners it is investigating over the tax leaks matter.
The Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) has defended its chief executive officer from accusations of conflicts of interest following a fresh round of media reports on its handling of the PwC tax leaks investigation.
TPB to wrap up nine PwC
investigations by December
Edmund Tadros
The Tax Practitioners Board
aims to have its nine separate investigations into the PwC tax leaks scandal
completed by the end of this year.
Chairman Peter de Cure told
a Thursday-morning hearing of the joint inquiry into the structure of the big
four partnerships that the investigations were “progressing well”.
“[We] have nine ongoing
investigations in relation to the PwC matter [and] those investigations are
progressing well,” de Cure said.
“We have a fixed plan as to
how those will proceed from here, and we would expect all of those
investigations to be concluded in the course of this calendar year. And we hope
to make significant progress towards the middle of this calendar year.”
He added that the “relevant” targets of the investigation included
current “or former PwC partners”.
TPB chief executive Michael O’Neill said PwC was more co-operative now
than when the tax leaks matter was initially investigated.
“Senator [Deborah O’Neill], I think since the first phase of the
investigation ... PwC have lent into co-operation and transparency, much more
than what was described as a legal and technical approach and the first phase,”
O’Neill said.
