Terms of Engagement
These are the standard terms of engagement of Dawson Lienert Chartered Accountants. If we have given you a copy of our terms with an engagement summary or a year-end package, that copy is the one that applies to you.
Version dated 4 September 2026. Download a PDF copy
ABOUT THESE TERMS
These terms set out the basis on which we act for you. They accompany the annual financial statements and income tax returns we have prepared, and they apply to that work and to the other services described below.
Where we have given you an engagement summary — a sheet naming you, the services we are providing and the basis of our fees — it forms part of these terms. Where the two differ, the engagement summary applies.
Where we have not given you an engagement summary, these terms still apply in full. References below to the engagement summary should then be read as referring to our most recent letter, email, fee quote or invoice describing the work we are doing for you.
We will give you a new engagement summary and terms if the scope of our work changes. Otherwise these terms continue to apply to this and to future work we do for you. We review them at least annually.
1. WHO WE ARE
Dawson Lienert Pty Ltd, ACN 137 365 710, trading as Dawson Lienert Chartered Accountants, of Level 1, 174 Collins Street, Hobart TAS 7000.
We are a registered tax agent. Our tax agent registration number is 70639002.
David Lienert is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Certificate of Public Practice. He is responsible for this engagement and is your point of contact.
2. WHO WE ACT FOR
We act only for the persons and entities named in the engagement summary or, where there is none, those for whom we prepare the work and to whom we address our invoices. If you would like us to act for anyone else — including a spouse, a family member, a related company or a trust — we will issue a separate engagement to them.
Where we act for more than one client together, each of you authorises us to act on the instructions of any of you, and to discuss the affairs of any of you with the others, unless you tell us otherwise in writing.
3. WHO MAY INSTRUCT US
You confirm that you, and any other person you nominate to us in writing, may give us instructions and information and receive our advice and documents.
If we act for a business and we receive conflicting instructions from different people, we may refer the matter to the directors, trustees or partners and act only as they direct.
4. WHAT WE WILL DO
Unless we have agreed something different with you in writing, our services are:
preparation of annual financial statements for the entities we act for, where we prepare them;
preparation and lodgement of income tax returns for those entities and for the individuals we act for;
preparation and lodgement of business activity statements and instalment activity statements, where we have agreed to do so;
company secretarial and ASIC lodgement work, where we have agreed to do so; and
taxation and accounting advice arising out of that work.
Where we have given you an engagement summary, or a letter or email describing a particular piece of work, that describes the services for that engagement and our work is limited to them.
Anything not listed above, and not separately agreed in writing, is outside our engagement. Clause 5 gives the most common examples.
We provide our services in accordance with the professional and ethical standards issued by the Accounting Professional & Ethical Standards Board (APESB), available at apesb.org.au, including APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants.
APES 110 contains provisions that apply if we become aware of actual or potential non-compliance with laws or regulations. Where non-compliance would cause substantial harm, we may be required to disclose the matter to an appropriate authority.
5. WHAT WE WILL NOT DO
We do not audit or review your information. No audit or review will be performed and no assurance will be expressed. Our work cannot be relied on to disclose fraud, other illegal acts, errors or irregularities. If any such matter comes to our attention, we will tell you.
We rely on the information you give us being true, correct and complete. We may ask you to clarify things, but we do not verify what you give us.
Unless we have agreed otherwise in writing, our advice covers income tax and GST only. It does not cover stamp duty, land tax, payroll tax, or any other tax or duty.
We are not engaged to provide, and our fees do not include:
bookkeeping, data entry or bank reconciliation unless we have been engaged to perform that task;
audit or review of any kind, including the audit of a self-managed superannuation fund, which is performed by an independent auditor who is separately engaged;
advice on financial products, or legal advice — see clause 11; or
work for any entity or person we do not act for — see clause 2.
6. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS — BASIS OF PREPARATION
Where we prepare financial statements for you:
They are special purpose financial statements, prepared to meet your needs and those of the users identified in the engagement summary or in the financial statements themselves. They are not general purpose financial statements and are not prepared in accordance with all Australian Accounting Standards.
You are responsible for the form and content of the financial information, for the reliability, accuracy and completeness of the accounting records and disclosures given to us, and for the judgements needed in preparing and presenting the financial information — including those we assist you with.
We will disclose the basis of accounting used, and any known departures from it, in the financial statements or in our compilation report.
The financial statements are prepared for your use and for the parties identified in the engagement summary or in the financial statements themselves, for the purpose stated. They must not be provided to anyone else, or used for any other purpose, without our written consent. Our compilation report will contain a disclaimer to this effect.
7. YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES
You must give us complete, accurate and timely instructions, information and documents — everything we ask for, and everything you reasonably expect we will need.
You must respond to our questions within 10 working days. Late, incomplete or inaccurate information may affect our work and our conclusions, may delay lodgement, and may increase our fees.
You must give us reasonable access to the relevant people and records.
You must tell us promptly if your circumstances change in a way that is relevant to our work — including if something you have already told us turns out to be inaccurate, incomplete or misleading. We are not responsible for advice that is wrong because the information it was based on was wrong.
If you do not give us your financial information reconciled and in the format we have asked for, any fixed fee or quote we have given you will not apply.
8. YOUR RECORD-KEEPING OBLIGATIONS
The law requires you to keep full and accurate records of your tax affairs. The responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the information you give us rests with you. Any advice we give is an opinion based on our knowledge of your circumstances.
You must keep:
tax records for 5 years; and
company records for 7 years from the date of each transaction, as required by the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).
Some records must be kept longer — for example records of asset acquisitions, which are needed for capital gains tax and should be kept for as long as you hold the asset and for 5 years after you dispose of it.
9. SAFE HARBOUR
The Taxation Administration Act 1953 contains “safe harbour” provisions that may protect you from administrative penalties for an incorrect or late return if — among other things — you give us all relevant taxation information in time.
It is in your interest to disclose everything relevant. A failure to do so may affect your ability to rely on the safe harbour, and will be taken into account in deciding whether we have discharged our obligations to you.
10. RELYING ON OUR ADVICE
We will record advice on important matters in writing. Advice given verbally is not intended to be relied on unless we confirm it in writing. If we say something in a meeting or on the telephone that you want to rely on, please ask us to confirm it.
Do not act on advice we gave you on an earlier occasion without checking with us that it still applies.
Our advice is based on the law as it stands when we give it. Tax law changes often. We will not update our advice unless you ask us to.
Our advice is for you alone. We accept no responsibility to any third party, unless we have agreed in writing that a named third party may rely on our work.
11. FINANCIAL PRODUCT ADVICE
We are not licensed to provide financial product advice under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). We confirm that:
any taxation advice we give about a financial product is only one of the matters to be considered in deciding on that product;
any factual information we give is objectively ascertainable, is an exempt document or statement under Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act, does not take account of your personal circumstances, objectives or goals, and is not intended to influence your decision about any financial product;
we recommend you obtain advice from an adviser who holds an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) before making any decision about a financial product;
where we have assisted you to obtain a financial product, we acted on your instructions. We did not provide financial product advice or financial product services, and we recommended you seek advice from an AFSL holder;
where we have referred you to an AFSL holder, we are not licensed to confirm or endorse their advice. We can only provide tax advice, factual information or accounting services in respect of it. We recommend you check that their services, charges and business model suit you;
we receive no commission or other benefit from the supply of any financial product or from any referral;
in any meeting or communication involving both us and your AFSL adviser, we are not providing financial product advice, even where we give taxation or accounting advice about the same subject. Where your adviser gives advice, or does not give advice, nothing we say should be taken as confirming, endorsing or denying it. We are happy to confirm any tax or accounting advice in writing on request.
We are not a law firm and do not give legal advice. We can refer you to a lawyer.
12. OUR OBLIGATIONS TO YOU, AND TO THE LAW
We have a duty to act lawfully and in your best interests. That duty is subject to an overriding obligation to comply with the law, even where that is contrary to your interests. For example, we could not lodge a return we knew to be false in a material respect.
Where we provide tax agent services we must comply with the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 and the Code of Professional Conduct. This includes obligations of reasonable care, lawful conduct, confidentiality, managing conflicts of interest, proper record keeping, supervision of work done on our behalf, and keeping you informed.
We must also comply with notices issued to us by the Commissioner of Taxation, including under section 353-10 of Schedule 1 to the Taxation Administration Act 1953.
If information given to us is false, incorrect or misleading, we may be required to ask you to correct it, and we may be unable to lodge documents or to continue acting until it is corrected.
13. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
We have arrangements in place to identify and manage conflicts of interest.
You must tell us if you become aware of an actual or potential conflict. A conflict is anything that may prevent us remaining objective — for example a change in your business, a death or a relationship breakdown in your family, or legal action against you.
If a conflict arises we will tell you, and we will discuss how it can be managed. In some cases we may not be able to continue acting for one or both of you.
14. CONFIDENTIALITY
We will take all reasonable steps to keep your information confidential, except where:
you permit us to disclose it;
we are required to disclose it by law, including under the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation described in clause 16;
we disclose it to the service providers described in clause 17, who are bound to keep it confidential;
it is required by our insurers or our professional advisers; or
it is required as part of a quality review.
Quality review. Our files may be reviewed under the quality review programme of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, which monitors members’ compliance with professional standards. By accepting these terms you acknowledge that, if requested, our files relating to your work will be made available under that programme. We will tell you if this happens.
We may mention that you are a client for promotional, training or similar business purposes. We will not disclose any confidential information in doing so. Tell us if you would prefer we did not.
15. PRIVACY
We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.
We may collect personal information about your representatives, your employees, your clients and others in the course of our work. Where you give us personal information, you confirm that you collected it in accordance with the Privacy Act, that you may give it to us, and that we may use and disclose it for the purposes of providing our services.
We may use personal information about you for related purposes — maintaining our client records, practice management, statutory returns, and legal and regulatory compliance.
Some of the service providers described in clause 17 store data outside Australia. Please read that clause.
16. ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING AND CLIENT VERIFICATION
From 1 July 2026 we are a reporting entity under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) in respect of certain designated services.
Where our services to you are designated services, we are required to:
establish and verify your identity, and the beneficial ownership and control of any entity we act for;
understand the nature and purpose of the engagement;
assess and manage money laundering and terrorism financing risk;
undertake ongoing customer due diligence;
keep records; and
report certain matters as required by law.
We will ask you for information and documents for these purposes. We may be unable to provide, or to continue providing, a service if the information is not given to us.
In some circumstances the law prevents us from telling you that a report has been made, or the reason we are unable to act.
17. THIRD PARTIES, OUTSOURCING, AND WHERE YOUR DATA IS STORED
We use third-party software and service providers to perform our services. To do that we give them access to your data to the extent required. Each is bound by its own security and privacy obligations, and by our agreement with them.
Your data is held in the locations shown below.
Xero — accounting ledgers, payroll and bank feeds. Xero states that data may be transferred to and processed in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
BGL (CAS 360) — company and trust registers, and ASIC lodgement. Held in Australia, with backups replicated to Japan for disaster recovery.
Class — SMSF administration. Held in Australia. Class staff working overseas may access it remotely.
Google Workspace — our email, AI, calendar and document storage. Information is held across Google’s global infrastructure.
Anthropic (Claude) — AI drafting, analysis and review. United States.
OpenAI (ChatGPT) — AI drafting, analysis and review. United States.
Adobe (Acrobat) — PDF preparation and editing. Documents may be saved to Adobe’s cloud storage. United States.
Australian Taxation Office online services — lodgement and account enquiries. Australia.
Our own file server in our Hobart office — client files and working papers. Australia.
Some of your information is therefore stored and processed outside Australia. Countries outside Australia may have privacy laws that differ from ours. Before disclosing your information to an overseas recipient we take reasonable steps, as the Australian Privacy Principles require, to ensure that it is handled consistently with those Principles.
We may add to, change or stop using these providers without amending these terms, provided we continue to meet our legal, professional and privacy obligations. We will tell you if there is a material change.
Where an SMSF audit is required it is performed by an independent approved SMSF auditor who is separately engaged. We will tell you who that is.
18. USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
We use artificial intelligence and other technology-assisted tools to support our work, including research, drafting, analysis, review and administration.
Where we use these tools:
we do so consistently with our professional and ethical obligations;
we take reasonable steps to protect the confidentiality and security of your information;
we apply professional judgement, human oversight and our own quality control to any material output;
we remain responsible for the services we provide and for any advice or document we give you; and
we may use providers located in Australia or overseas, as set out in clause 17.
We may adopt, change or stop using these tools during our engagement without amending these terms, provided our use remains consistent with our obligations.
The Tax Practitioners Board has issued guidance on the use of artificial intelligence by registered tax agents — TPB(GS) 55/2026 — which explains how our obligations under the Code of Professional Conduct apply when we use these tools. Your permission for us to use them is dealt with in clause 30.
19. YOUR DOCUMENTS, AND OURS
All original documents you give us remain yours. We may keep copies.
Financial statements, tax returns, fund documents and similar documents we produce for you belong to you once our fees for that work are paid. All other documents we produce — including our working papers, in any form — remain ours, and we keep them in accordance with our record-keeping obligations.
Lien. So far as the law and professional guidelines permit, we may keep documents, records and funds in our possession relating to your work until our outstanding fees and disbursements are paid in full. If you dispute a fee please use the process in clause 24 rather than waiting for the account to fall overdue.
We own the copyright in what we create. You may use it for the purpose for which you engaged us.
20. FEES AND PAYMENT
Our fees are set out in the engagement summary or, where there is none, in our fee quote or invoice. They are set having regard to the skill, responsibility and time involved, and the value and risk of the work. All amounts are in Australian dollars and are stated exclusive of GST.
An estimate is an estimate only, and our actual fees may differ. Where we have quoted a fixed fee and unforeseen circumstances make it inadequate, we will tell you and seek your agreement to a revised figure before continuing.
Our accounts are payable in full within 7 days of the date of the invoice, unless we have agreed that payment is required in advance.
If an account is not paid within terms and we refer it to a debt collection agency or a law firm, you agree to pay us, as a liquidated debt, any commission, disbursements and legal fees we are charged.
21. TAX REFUNDS AND CLIENT MONIES
We do not receive tax refunds on your behalf and we do not deduct our fees from your tax refunds. Refunds are paid by the ATO directly to the bank account nominated in your return.
We do not operate a trust account and we do not hold money on your behalf.
22. PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE
We maintain professional indemnity insurance that complies with the requirements of the Tax Practitioners Board and of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. Details of our current policy have been notified to the Tax Practitioners Board.
23. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
We will provide our services with reasonable care and skill.
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.
You agree not to bring a claim against any of our directors, shareholders or employees personally.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, special or consequential loss or damage of any kind, or for liability arising from the acts or omissions of any other person, from circumstances outside our reasonable control, or from your breach of these terms.
24. COMPLAINTS
If you have a concern about our fees or our services, please raise it with David Lienert — by telephone on 03 6224 0803, or by email to david@dawsonlienert.com.
We will acknowledge your complaint, and we may ask you to set it out in writing so we can investigate it properly. We will use our best endeavours to resolve it to the satisfaction of everyone involved.
If your complaint concerns a tax agent service we have provided, you may also complain to the Tax Practitioners Board. Their process is at tpb.gov.au/complaints.
25. THE TAX PRACTITIONERS BOARD REGISTER
The Tax Practitioners Board maintains a public register of registered, suspended and deregistered tax and BAS agents. You can search it at tpb.gov.au/public-register.
We are required to tell you about certain events that may influence your decision to engage us, and about any conditions on our registration.
There are no such events to disclose, and there are no conditions attached to our registration.
26. YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THE TAXATION LAWS
You have rights under the taxation laws — including the right to seek a private ruling from the ATO, and the right to object to or appeal a decision of the Commissioner. You also have obligations, including to keep proper records and to lodge by the due date.
Australia operates a self-assessment system. Where we prepare a return in reliance on a binding ruling, we will tell you.
The Tax Practitioners Board publishes a factsheet, Keeping your clients informed, which summarises your obligations to the ATO and to us, and our obligations to you, to the TPB and to the ATO. It is available at tpb.gov.au/keeping-your-clients-informed.
27. COMMUNICATION
Please tell us if your contact details change. We may send communications to the last details you gave us.
Unless you tell us otherwise we may correspond with you by email. Email is not a secure medium and can be intercepted, delayed or lost. We are not liable for loss arising from the interception or corruption of an email, but we will take reasonable steps to protect information we send.
If you have a myGov account, the ATO will send your notice of assessment to you and not to us.
28. TERMINATION
Either of us may end this engagement by giving the other at least 21 days’ notice in writing.
We may end it immediately if a conflict of interest arises, if a concern arises under the anti-money laundering legislation, if you do not co-operate with us, or if we have reason to believe information given to us or to anyone else is misleading or factually inaccurate.
Ending the engagement does not affect rights that have already accrued. We will issue a final account for work done to that date, and we will return your documents subject to clause 19.
29. GENERAL
These terms are governed by the law of Tasmania, and the courts of Tasmania have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute between us.
If any provision is void, it is severed and the rest continues to apply.
30. YOUR PERMISSION, AND ACCEPTING THESE TERMS
Your permission to disclose your information. We must not disclose information relating to your affairs to anyone else without your permission, unless the law requires us to. By accepting these terms you give us that permission in respect of:
the third-party providers described in clause 17, in the locations described in that clause, including locations outside Australia; and
the artificial intelligence tools described in clause 18.
That permission extends only so far as is required for us to provide our services to you.
You may withdraw it at any time by telling us in writing. If you withdraw it we may be unable to continue providing some or all of our services, because the systems described in clause 17 are how the work is done.
Accepting these terms. Where we have given you an engagement summary, please confirm your agreement, and give the permission above, by signing and returning it.
Where we have not given you an engagement summary, you accept these terms and give the permission above by continuing to instruct us. We may ask you to sign an engagement summary, or a separate consent, before we take on further work for you.
These terms continue to apply to this and to future work we do for you until we give you replacement terms.
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.