INTHEBLACK September 2021 - Magazine - Page 35
One of the most powerful benefits of the National
Tax Clinic program, Kayis-Kumar says, is that it frees
people of the psychological burden.
“What we’re seeing with the clients we help is that
it is often problems beyond an individual’s control that
have led to their circumstances – whether it’s health
problems, mental or physical, relationship breakdowns,
external shocks like we’re seeing with the pandemic,
and things that are no fault of the individual.”
She says the professional expertise offered by the
clinic is invaluable, particularly in light of the tax
system’s complexity.
“It’s one thing to tell a person to just look it up
online, but if that person has low levels of literacy,
let alone tax literacy or financial literacy, or access
issues because they don’t have a digital device, it is
really challenging.”
GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY
Charles Darwin University (CDU) in the Northern
Territory became involved in the National Tax Clinic
program because it acknowledged the complexity of
the tax system and recognised the need to support all
taxpayers in achieving a fair outcome with their tax
matters, says Professor David Low CPA, provost of
the Asia-Pacific College of Business and Law.
CDU’s bid to establish its clinic was based on the
fact that it would service a population that is strongly
multicultural, predominantly in low socio-economic
circumstances, and living in remote and regional
communities with limited access to professional
representation.
“We saw this as something we could do to give
back to the community,” says Low.
The CDU Tax Clinic was set up and run by Professor
Indra Abeysekera CPA, who had to overcome a unique
set of challenges, including designing an operational
model and engagement methods to suit the clinic’s
target clients.
For example, instead of “National Tax Clinic”, it was
named “Free Tax Clinic” to arouse curiosity in the local
community. Before the pandemic, the clinic operated
seven days a week, from June to October, providing
advice out of the university’s most centrally located
Waterfront Campus in Darwin during the week, and
on weekends setting up at shopping centres as far as
Alice Springs and Katherine.
When COVID-19 hit, the clinic pivoted its
operations, particularly when servicing clients from
remote communities who were among those at highest
risk of contracting the virus. CDU also engaged a local
tax firm to provide two paid clinic supervisors to help
run the clinic.
“The firm got a lot of job satisfaction out of serving
the clients and mentoring our students,” says Low.
“They even had a couple of new clients come to them
because they saw, through the little bit of publicity, that
they were doing their corporate social responsibility.”
REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE
The UNSW Tax Clinic was the first to establish
a teaching hub for future tax practitioners, by
incorporating a tax clinic specialist elective course into
their subject offerings.
The clinic employs two professional accountants,
Paul Viola CPA and Helen Lam CPA, to supervise and
mentor the accounting and law students who provide
the clinic’s services. Ultimately though, it is Viola or
Lam who prepare the tax returns for clients under their
tax agent licences.
Lam believes the tax clinic is helping to create more
empathetic and skilled graduates, and hopes they take
away with them a willingness to do more pro bono
work in the future. It also provides students with an
opportunity to get valuable client interview skills and
file management experience with real-world cases prior
to graduation.
“In your typical accounting practice, you will deal
with some clients who are a bit more difficult than
others, but this experience helps you to consider if
maybe they have other things going on in their lives
that they are not telling you about – perhaps they
have mental health issues or financial difficulties,”
says Lam.
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