ATO PENALTIES, INTEREST CHARGES AND REMISSION IN PRACTICE

Overview

This course equips BAS agents, public practitioners and tax professionals to identify and separate ATO penalty exposure, interest exposure, and remission opportunities with precision. It uses realistic client scenarios, professional standards, and applied decision-making tools so that advice, objections, and remission requests are technically sound, ethically defensible, and practically useful.

Objectives

You should be able to distinguish between primary tax liabilities, administrative penalties, interest charges, and remission decisions.
You should be able to identify the main ATO penalty regimes that arise from false or misleading statements, shortfalls, late lodgement, reporting failures, and payment defaults.
You should be able to analyse when remission is realistically available, and when a technical objection, voluntary disclosure, or debt-management response is the better pathway.
You should be able to apply professional and ethical standards when gathering facts, framing submissions, and correcting prior errors.
You should be able to advise clients in a way that balances technical merit, fairness, proportionality, and evidentiary discipline.

Learning outcomes

You should be able to map a client problem to the correct penalty, interest, and remission framework.
You should be able to assess the behavioural standard likely to be alleged, including reasonable care, recklessness, and intentional disregard.
You should be able to prepare a defensible remission request supported by chronology, causation, and contemporaneous evidence.
You should be able to identify the practical effect of APES 110, APES 220, and registered tax practitioner conduct obligations on day-to-day advisory work.
You should be able to make better decisions about corrections, disclosures, objections, payment planning, and review pathways.

CPD compliance mapping

Lesson outcome area	TPB and registered practitioner relevance	CPA Australia, CA ANZ and IPA CPD relevance	Practical evidence of completion
Classification of primary tax, penalties, GIC, SIC and remission.	Supports competent tax and BAS services, reasonable care in applying taxation laws, and advising clients about relevant rights and obligations.	Technical tax, tax administration, risk management and client advisory capability.	Completion of scenario-based questions on issue classification and interest sequencing.
Behavioural penalties, reasonable care, recklessness and voluntary disclosure.	Supports reasonable care in ascertaining client facts, the correct application of tax law, and handling false or misleading statements.	Tax technical capability, ethics, advisory judgement and professional competence.	Completion of scenario-based questions on shortfall conduct, disclosure timing and penalty reduction.
Evidence-led remission and professional conduct.	Supports honesty, integrity, proper client records, quality management, conflict management and accurate ATO communications.	Ethics, governance, practice management and professional standards.	Completion of questions requiring chronology, causation, evidence packs and ethical responses.
Review pathways, objections, complaints and debt management.	Supports advising clients about materially relevant rights and obligations, including review options and payment engagement.	Tax dispute management, client communication, governance and risk management.	Completion of questions on remission refusal, payment arrangements, GIC and review-right preservation.
Compliance design and post-event remediation.	Supports supervision, quality management, recordkeeping, and recurrence-risk reduction within tax and BAS service delivery.	Practice management, quality control, client service, risk and governance capability.	Completion of questions on privilege planning, control redesign and remediation records.