myGov is an online account designed to allow all your communication with various government services to be accessed from one portal.

There is a growing range of services being provided through myGov including Medicare, Centrelink, Child Support, my Aged Care and recently, the ATO. In principle myGov is a fast and simple way to access various government services. However, before you commit to using myGov for corresponding with the ATO, we believe there are some significant issues for you to consider.

Direction of your ATO correspondence

One the advantages of registering a myGov account and linking it to the ATO is that you are able to see information regarding your various superannuation funds. However, another consequence is that all future correspondence from the ATO will be sent direct to your myGov account and all paper communications from the ATO will cease. You will receive an email notification that something has hit your account.

The documents affected will include your Notices of Assessment, Business Activity Statements, PAYG instalments and various other correspondence.

As your accountant, we will no longer receive the documentation on your behalf. This means that we will not get immediate notification that something has been sent to your myGov account. Our practice to date has been to receive documents on your behalf, send you communication of what the ATO is talking about and then act on it accordingly. Additionally, we will not so easily be able to inform you if you are getting behind with payments or other tax obligations.

Keeping on top of your affairs

myGov, if used in the way that it is intended, could help you keep on top of your tax affairs. However, it does mean that you will have to take more responsibility for acting on correspondences. We will not necessarily be able to contact you about significant issues.

Changing your mind

To opt out of the link between myGov and the ATO, you only need to uncheck a box on the portal. However, we are not sure of the implications of doing it. The ATO has not released information on what this would mean in terms of future correspondence.

We will monitor myGov developments and keep you informed.