A Tax Ombudsman review into services provided by the ATO to tax agents has found increasing frustration.
Poor and inconsistent advice, insufferable wait times - including cut-off points - and poor language skills have all been cited in the relationship breakdown between agency and agents.
Tax Ombudsman Ruth Owen said she had been "overwhelmed with strong feedback" in her review, not the first into ATO misgivings.
Nola Luyten of Queensland firm Eagle Tax and Accounting, was critical of her dealings with the ATO, saying calls landed in the laps of people with "no experience whatsoever".
"That they do a six-week course, a lot of them are contractors that read a script ... they will then move you on somewhere else, and this is how you're on the phone for two hours," she said.
"It gets to the point where they just now tell you, just make a complaint."
While the delays - including blown-out service standards beyond 28 days - were frustrating, she said inconsistent advice was a more damning problem.
"You can ring up one person and get one answer of no, you ring up another and you get a yes. You can't have that," Ms Luyten said.
Servicing tax queries is a mammoth ask: the ATO received 8.9 million calls in the 2025 financial year, including more than 1.1 million through the registered agent line.
There is much turnover among call centre contractors, with half of staff in their first year of the job.Â
Agents are frustrated their calls go through to the same team that service the general population, when they typically have more difficult technical or complex queries.
Ms Luyten said it added up to additional costs that were borne by either her or her clients.
"I have to say to them are you sure you want to do this because it could take two hours and do you want to pay for that?" she said.
Ms Owen said it was in the ATO and taxpayer interests to service agents well, given the link between third party-prepared tax returns and tax compliance.
In response to the report, the ATO has agreed to try and lift performance on a number of fronts, including by publishing response times and investigating improved quality controls.
However, ATO Second Commissioner of Taxation David Allen denied overall performance was down, citing a falling number of formal complaints.
Ms Owen was disappointed the ATO would not route agents calls to more experienced staff.
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