FPA

Back in 2019, then-FPA CEO Dante De Gori and Tangelo Advice Consulting’s Conrad Travers engaged the ATO to see if it would be open to updating guidance on the tax deductibility of upfront advice fees. By the middle of this year, we should see the outcome.

“There’s so much pain, so much division on this one,” FAAA CEO Sarah Abood said of the proposed exemption. “It actually really upsets me, as I know it upsets many members.”

The new association will be branded with its key purpose – providing a unified voice representing advisers – reflected in speech bubbles over the ‘A’s in its name.

Michelle Levy said she was ‘puzzled’ by the government’s decision to conduct a consultation on the proposals handed down in the advice review, while industry leaders urged for the adoption of her reform suite.

After years of declining membership bases and growing frustration with disparate representation, 96.5 per cent of AFA members and 96.7 per cent of FPA members voted in favour of a merger between the two groups.

Levy made no major deviations in her final suite of proposals, with Treasury left to mull on a blueprint for reform that should usher in a less prescriptive, two-tiered advice regime. But there are a few tweaks that might raise eyebrows.

The old guard of advice representation has implored the combined membership groups of the AFA and FPA to vote ‘yes’ in the upcoming merger vote.

Advisers are rallying around the prospect of upfront advice fees becoming tax deductible after the ATO announced a review of Tax Determination 95/60.

The Corporations Act is “technology neutral” according to ASIC, so video SOAs are acceptable as long as they include the eight or so standard compliance requirements.

The draft documents to be handed out in December will contain information members can use to assess whether a union between the two groups is the best way forward, FPA chief Sarah Abood tells The Inside Adviser.