Organisation: Australian Taxation Office
Job Title: Compliance Officer, APS5
Word Limit: 700 words total
Location: Sydney
Within my current role as Compliance Officer within the Active Compliance Superannuation Team,
I demonstrate my ability to communicate clearly and concisely. I have demonstrated these skills in
communicating with Team Leaders, employers and employees who lodge complaints to the ATO. I
often liaise with stakeholders over the phone and ensure they have a clear understanding of the
information I am giving them and the process going forward. My written skills are used in writing
correspondence to employers and through notification of proactive audits which are going to be
undertaken. In addition, I have been responsible for taking minutes from team meetings and the
writing of internal emails.
In order to undertake my role in self-managed superannuation funds, I undertook training and I
have recently been selected for some training in Brisbane. In addition to ATO-provided training
sessions, and online learning and development, I currently show my commitment to personal
development through my study to achieve my Certified Practising Accountant (CPA) status, which I
am half way through.
I have demonstrated my ability to both foster and maintain positive and professional relationships
with colleagues and clients within my role as Compliance Officer. Each case we receive has to be
initiated, planned, executed and closed and each phase requires approval to move on to the next.
I communicate with the Technical Hub area in Brisbane and Perth in order to work together to
make this process happen smoothly. We video conference around once a month to ensure we are
all on the same page.
With team members, I am an advocate for sharing knowledge between us, including any technical
or legislative changes. I participate in whiteboard meetings to work together on complex cases and
to inform others of courses of action they can use if they come across similar situations. Other
areas where I build and maintain relationships include building security, IT services and a range of
corporate services within the ATO.
Recently the ATO has gone through some significant changes, which in turn have affected clients
and stakeholders. Client needs have changed through a more automated system and I have
contributed to a more proactive method of auditing within my team as well as keeping tax payers
and employers abreast of the changes.
Along with my formal learning in the areas of financial reporting, taxation and ethics, I also have
significant experience and knowledge around different types of businesses and in gathering
evidence. One way I have demonstrated this is through my role in determining whether the
relationships in business are employee to employer, or a contractor relationship. Gathering
evidence through a large questionnaire, I have on many occasions used data matching techniques
to make decisions of this nature. In addition, using legislation and procedure and applying it to
different situations, I have investigated and recommended penalties and determined earnings on
many occasions.
In the client account services area, I worked on a project around interest on overpayments. The
project was to determine how the legislation should be changed in relation to the integrated client
processing system. During this time, I assisted in the investigation of one case where the employer
was applying for interest on their overpayment. It became clear to me during the investigation,
that when our internal systems were changed over, there was an error made where interest was
not being calculated. We determined they were entitled to compensation for this error and the
error was then amended.
Since joining the ATO, I have worked in client services solutions, the debt and lodgement area and
the small business area. I have undertaken higher duties as both an APS4 in client account services
and as an APS6 Team Leader for 4 months. This has given me an excellent understanding of the
different roles the ATO plays in terms of customers.
Within my current role, I consistently give advice to tax payers and their representatives through
conducting interviews with trustees of self-managed super funds, to determine their knowledge
and understanding. I have been directly involved in supplying information and explanations
including dates for interest calculations and a range of technical and legislative advice. This makes
people aware of their obligations to the tax office and ensures compliance.
