Institute of Public Accountants executive Vicki Stylianou said there is no official definition for accountants.
One of Australia’s peak accounting bodies has revealed there are at least 200,000 self-proclaimed accountants in the country.
At a recent parliamentary inquiry hearing, representatives from the Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) were questioned about the number of “accountants” operating outside professional oversight.
“It was around the 200,000 mark,” Vicki Stylianou, an executive at the IPA, told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services.
The figure was tallied by the IPA a few years ago using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The IPA compared the number of people who identified their occupation as accountants with the number of members of the three legal accounting bodies–the IPA, CPA (Certified Public Accountant) and Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ).
Stylianou noted that the IPA could not identify how many of those self-proclaimed accountants were ex-members of the three bodies.
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In addition, the executive officer said there was an issue with how to define somebody as an accountant.
“The other question is, how do you define accountant? Because it’s not defined,” she said.
“So, an accountant could be someone who does a data entry that identifies as an accountant for ABS purposes.
“[Some] could call themselves an accountant by … getting some software to produce a financial statement.”
According to data from the three accounting bodies, the CPA has around 175,000 members, with 30 percent being from overseas, the CAANZ has over 134,000 members in Australia and New Zealand, and the IPA has 25,000 members.
ASIC Questioned About Regulation Gap
Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill, the chair of the committee, asked representatives from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) about how to resolve the issue of self-identifying accountants.
“There could be hundreds of thousands of people out there purporting to be accountants. There’s nothing to stop them declaring themselves as auditors for the purposes of SMSF [self-managed super fund],” she said.
In response, ASIC Chair Joseph Longo said it was not possible for someone to identify themselves as an auditor unless he or she was registered.
However, he admitted that ASIC could not do much.
“That [accountant] is a concept of much broader import,” he said.
“I’m not aware of any legislation, state or federal, which regulates the use of that word. And in fact, by analogy, the same applies to engineers.
“I think the accounting discussion we’re having is a really difficult one because there are lots of accountants, and they’re providing a wide variety of services, and if we’re to regulate them more effectively, there’s a self-regulation concept that’s been discussed.
“But the extent of the efficacy of that, I think, is perhaps not going to be very satisfying in the absence of legislation.”
