From January 22 the national tax authority is changing how registered agents can ask for interest and late-lodgment penalties to be reduced or removed, shifting away from phone calls and ad hoc messages to a standardised form process. The move follows a drop in successful remission requests in 2024–25 and growing frustration from professional advisers who say the existing approach feels inconsistent and hard to predict.
Under the new rules, agents will need to download specific remission forms from the tax authority’s website and lodge them through the online services portal for agents, with phone-based assistance only available where agents cannot access the digital system. The forms will cover general interest charges, shortfall interest charges and failure-to-lodge penalties, and requests will be routed to a dedicated specialist team tasked with applying clearer criteria and reducing the sense of “potluck” around outcomes. However, the agency is already warning that taxpayers and agents should expect delays as the new workflow beds down.
In the bigger picture, this appears to be a cautious interim fix while broader reviews into taxpayer relief and interest remission are still underway. The impact on transparency, turnaround times and agent workloads remains uncertain. Some stakeholders see a more structured online process as a step toward fairer and better documented decisions, while others worry the loss of informal human conversations could make it harder to explain complex circumstances and secure timely relief for clients.
