The ATO has confirmed it is extending client-to-agent linking to individuals and sole traders. Companies and trusts have lived with this since 2023. Sole traders have not, and that is changing.
Nothing changes today. Your existing arrangement with us is unaffected, and you do not need to do anything. This is a heads-up, not a task.
What will change
At the moment, if you engage us as your tax agent, we add you to our client list at our end. The appointment happens in our software; you never touch the ATO's systems.
Under the new process that reverses. We send a nomination, and you confirm it through the ATO app or Online services for individuals before we can access your tax record or act for you.
The timing the ATO has published:
- March 2027 — a pilot with selected agents and the clients they onboard.
- November 2027 — full rollout. From then it becomes the only way a registered agent can add a new individual or sole trader client.
It applies when you appoint a new agent, or when an existing agent's authorisations change. It is not a yearly re-confirmation.
Why it exists
Identity theft. The gap being closed is a real one: someone with enough of your details could have an agent appointed over your tax record without you knowing, redirect a refund, or lodge a return in your name. Requiring the taxpayer to confirm the appointment from inside their own ATO login removes that.
It is a sensible change. It also adds a step, and the step depends on something a lot of people have not tested in years.
The one thing worth doing now
Check that you can actually log in to myGov and get into ATO online services.
That is the step that will hold things up in 2027 — not the nomination, not the paperwork. The common failures are predictable and all take time to fix:
- The myGov account is linked to an old phone number for the security code, and the phone is long gone.
- The account is linked to an email address you no longer use.
- There is no myGov account at all, or there are two and nobody knows which one is linked to the ATO.
- The ATO link was never set up, which needs identity documents and a linking code.
None of these are hard to fix with a free afternoon. All of them are miserable to fix in the week you need a return lodged.
So the suggestion is simply: log in once, confirm it works, update the phone number if it is wrong. Then forget about it until we raise it again.
If you cannot use digital services
The ATO has said it is developing assisted and non-digital pathways for taxpayers who cannot engage online. The detail has not been published yet. If this is you — or an elderly parent whose return you help with — tell us, and we will follow what the ATO releases and sort out the alternative rather than leaving you to find it.
If you are a USQ client, we will walk you through the nomination when the time comes, in English or Korean. Until then, the only useful thing is the myGov check above.
This is general information, not personal tax advice. Your circumstances change the answer — please talk to us before acting on it.