Accounting Firms

What this means for your firm

From 1 July 2026, an accounting firm carries AML/CTF obligations for the specific services it provides that the Act lists, not for having clients. Preparing a tax return for an individual is not one of them. Forming a company for a client, acting as trustee of a client's trust, or providing a client company's registered office address is.

Your firm may do a great deal of work that sits outside the regime and one engagement a year that sits inside it. The obligations attach to the engagement, which is why Duely models compliance on the matter rather than the client.

For the general test, see Obligations overview.

Which services are designated services

Tick the services your firm provides to see which ones are designated services. The detail for each item follows below.

Step 1 of 2

Which of these services do you provide?

Tick everything your business does, including work you think is out of scope.

Property

Act for a buyer or seller in a property sale or transfer, such as conveyancing, contracts or settlement

Companies, trusts and structures

Set up companies or trusts for clients, or change their legal structure, for example a merger or demergerHelp a client buy, sell or transfer a company or trust, including its shares or unitsHelp a company or trust raise equity or debt finance, such as a capital raising or business loanSell or transfer shelf companiesAct as a company director, secretary or partner on a client's behalf, or arrange for someone else toAct as trustee of a trust for a client, or arrange for someone else toHold a power of attorney on behalf of a clientAct as a nominee shareholder for a client, or arrange for someone else toProvide a registered office or business address for a client

Client money

Hold client money in your trust account, or receive money from clients and pay it out on their behalf

Other work

Prepare tax returns or give tax adviceBookkeeping or payrollPrepare financial statements or management accountsAudit or assurance

Accounting services fall under Table 6 in s 6(5B) of the AML/CTF Act 2006, the professional services table. It has nine items. Table 6 is profession neutral: it captures the service, not your job title or your professional membership, so the same nine items apply to an accountant, a lawyer, a financial adviser or a business consultant.

Three conditions apply to every item:

• In the course of carrying on a business: a service you provide only once, or for free to further the business, still counts. AUSTRAC points out that a free or discounted service does not necessarily carry less risk.
• An external customer: a service you provide to another member of your own business group is not a designated service (s 6(6A)).
• A geographical link to Australia: broadly, the service is provided through a permanent establishment in Australia, or by an Australian resident, or a subsidiary of an Australian resident company, through a permanent establishment overseas (s 6(6)).

How to tell whether a service counts

For items 1 to 4 and 6, AUSTRAC asks whether your work is sufficiently linked to the outcome the item describes. Being connected to a transaction is not enough. Your work has to take active steps that move it forward. Two principles decide it:

• Who: a person whose assistance to a customer directly advances the transaction, or the creation or restructure of the entity. Merely influencing how the customer proceeds, giving general advice, or providing ancillary services is not sufficient.
• When: the service starts when you act on instructions and directly advance the transaction. That is typically once two or more parties to a transaction exist, or when preparatory steps are taken to create or restructure a body corporate or legal arrangement.

"Planning" and "organising" extend to preparatory steps that directly advance the outcome, but not to outcomes that are hypothetical or remote. The items also look forward. Drafting documents to create a company is item 6. Advising after incorporation on whether the company was validly created is not, because the creation is no longer in progress.

AUSTRAC's worked example is a financial adviser helping a client set up a self-managed super fund. The adviser recommends the fund, explains the steps, introduces a solicitor and instructs the solicitor to set up the trust, then reviews the deed and helps the client fill in rollover and investment forms. AUSTRAC's view is that the adviser does not provide a Table 6 service, because the advice influenced the creation of the trust without directly advancing it. The solicitor who drafts the trust deed and has it executed provides item 6, from the point they accept the instruction and act on it.

The adviser would have provided item 6 by drafting the trust deed and the paperwork to appoint trustees and beneficiaries, or by giving advice complete enough for the client to create the trust without further professional help. An accounting firm that prepares the deed for a client's SMSF or family trust is in the solicitor's position, not the adviser's.

The nine items, with accounting examples

The descriptions paraphrase s 6(5B). The customer is the person you assist unless the text below says otherwise.

Item	What it covers	Examples for accountants	Not covered
1	Assisting in, or acting in, a transaction to sell, buy or transfer real estate	Acting in the steps of a client's property transfer	Advice on whether to buy, sell or pull out of settlement; transfers under a court or tribunal order
2	Assisting in, or acting in, a transaction to sell, buy or transfer a body corporate or legal arrangement	Acting for a client selling its company once a buyer is identified	Tax advice on a possible sale; transfers of a non-controlling interest; transfers under a court or tribunal order
3	Receiving, holding and controlling (including disbursing), or managing, a client's money, accounts, securities, virtual assets or other property as part of a transaction	Taking client money into the firm's account and paying the client's bills on their instructions	Your own fees; payments to the ATO or another government body; the s 6(5C) cases below
4	Assisting in organising, planning or executing equity or debt financing for a body corporate or legal arrangement, existing or proposed	Leading a client company's capital raising or loan once investors or lenders are identified	General advice on financing options; credit rating work
5	Selling or transferring a shelf company (customer: the buyer or transferee)	Selling a registered company that has not traded	Registering a new company for a client, which is item 6
6	Assisting in, or acting in, the creation or restructuring of a body corporate or legal arrangement	Registering a company with ASIC, drafting a trust deed, a merger or demerger	Testamentary trusts; corporations under the CATSI Act; staffing or IT changes
7	Acting as, or arranging for someone to act as, a director or secretary, a partner, a trustee of an express trust, or a power of attorney of a body corporate or legal arrangement, on a client's behalf (customer: the client, called the nominator)	A partner acting as secretary of a client's company, or trustee of a client's family trust	Power of attorney for an individual; executor or trustee of a testamentary trust; acting only as a filing agent
8	Acting as, or arranging for someone to act as, a nominee shareholder of a body corporate or legal arrangement (customer: the nominator)	Holding shares in a client's company for the client and voting on its instructions	Shares held other than on behalf of a nominator
9	Providing a registered office address or principal place of business address of a body corporate or legal arrangement	Letting a client company use the firm's address as its registered office while it operates elsewhere	The address a business operates from, such as its landlord's premises

Forming and restructuring entities (item 6)

Company and trust establishment work falls here. Item 6 covers assisting a person to plan or execute, or acting on their behalf in, "the creation or restructuring" of a company or other body corporate, or of a legal arrangement. A legal arrangement is an express trust, a partnership, a joint venture, an unincorporated association, or a similar foreign arrangement (s 5).

AUSTRAC lists these preparatory steps as part of the service:

• drafting, reviewing and negotiating company constitutions, partnership agreements, shareholders agreements and documents creating corporate trustees
• drafting and reviewing trust deeds, for example for a discretionary trust, a bare trust or another asset protection arrangement
• documents for a merger or demerger, including a proposed one
• registering applications and forms with ASIC, for example to register a company or a business name
• due diligence on accounts and finances before a corporate transaction.

"Restructuring" means changing the legal form of the entity, for example converting a company limited by guarantee into a company limited by shares, splitting one company into several, or merging companies. Changes to staffing, IT systems or product lines are not restructuring. Debt restructuring for small businesses under the Corporations Act is not item 6 either, though item 4 may apply to some debt restructures.

Item 6 does not cover testamentary trusts, trusts that arise by operation of law rather than in writing, or corporations under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006. An express trust is one "expressly and intentionally created in writing by a settlor" and excludes a testamentary trust (s 5), so drafting a will is not item 6.

Item 6 has more than one customer. The customer is the person who instructs you and, where the service is creating a company, the company's beneficial owners and directors, or where it is creating an express trust, the trustee, settlor and beneficiaries.

Acting in a role for a client (items 7 and 8)

Item 7 covers acting as, or arranging for someone else to act as, a director or secretary of a company, a power of attorney of a body corporate or legal arrangement, a partner in a partnership, a trustee of an express trust, or a functionally equivalent position, "on behalf of a person". Item 8 covers the same for a nominee shareholder, meaning someone who holds shares or an interest for another person and votes on that person's instructions or receives dividends for them.

"Acting as" a director on behalf of a client means the client keeps control over how the director performs the role and the director acts on the client's wishes. The service includes arranging: agreeing for someone to act, drafting documents to appoint them, or identifying or introducing the person to be appointed.

Item 7 does not apply to:

• a power of attorney for an individual
• trustees or executors of testamentary trusts, and trustees of trusts not created in writing
• acting in a fiduciary capacity under, or as a result of, a court or tribunal order (s 6(5E)(a))
• acting as trustee of a regulated debtor's estate under the Bankruptcy Act 1966 (s 6(5E)(b)).

An ordinary agency relationship is not item 7 on its own. AUSTRAC says a person acting only as a filing agent, representative or service provider carrying out administrative or procedural steps does not fall within it by that fact alone.

Registered office and business address (item 9)

Item 9 applies when you provide an address for a body corporate or legal arrangement to use as its registered office or principal place of business in place of the address it operates from. It starts when you make the address available, even if the client has not yet given it to ASIC, and it applies whether or not you charge for it. The customer is the entity using the address.

AUSTRAC's example is an accounting firm that lets a new online company use the firm's address as its registered office, while the company operates from premises it leases elsewhere. The firm provides item 9 to the company. The landlord does not, because it provides the address the company operates from.

Client money (item 3)

Item 3 covers two different ways of dealing with a client's money or property as part of a transaction:

• Receiving, holding and controlling: read together. It covers receiving client funds, holding them, and controlling when and where they are paid out, for example money in your trust account that you disburse.
• Managing: deciding how a client's money or property is dealt with, with authority and discretion, even if you never hold it. Implementing fixed, binding instructions or routine payments under existing obligations is less likely to be managing.

AUSTRAC gives two accounting examples. A practice that takes a client's money into its bank account and pays the client's lease and school fees on the client's instructions is likely providing item 3. A bookkeeper who processes payroll, supplier invoices, rent, loan repayments and GST and PAYG remittances on fixed instructions, without discretion to redirect funds, is less likely to be managing the client's money.

The customer is the client you act for. A person whose money only passes through your account in a transaction where you act for someone else does not become your customer.

Tax returns, bookkeeping and audit are not designated services

None of the nine items describes preparing tax returns, keeping books, auditing financial statements or giving general tax or business advice. AUSTRAC's example is an accounting firm advising a client on the tax implications of selling its company: the advice may influence the decision, but it does not directly advance a transaction.

A firm that only does this work carries no AML/CTF obligations. The position changes when the same firm also directly advances a listed outcome, for example acting for the client in the sale once a buyer is identified (item 2), including the due diligence and valuation done for that sale.

Sales of entities and financing (items 2, 4 and 5)

Item 2 applies only where the sale, purchase or transfer relates to a controlling interest in the body corporate or legal arrangement, whether or not it is for value. Where there is one buyer, the service starts when you are instructed to act in the sale to that buyer. Where several potential buyers are identified, it starts when negotiations begin with one or more of them. AUSTRAC lists negotiating for the client, preparing or reviewing sale contracts, due diligence and valuation of assets and liabilities, Foreign Investment Review Board approvals and ASX or ASIC waivers, settlement preparation and ASIC documents as part of the service.

Item 4 covers all capital and debt raising methods, from share purchase plans and rights issues to loans and debentures, for an entity that exists or is being formed. The funds must be payable to, or held in trust for, the entity. General advice on financing options is not item 4. Acting on instructions to negotiate, structure and document a specific raising is.

Item 5 is selling or transferring a shelf company, meaning a company registered with ASIC that has not traded and has no assets or liabilities. The customer is the buyer or transferee.

Exemptions and edge cases

• Court and tribunal orders (items 1 and 2 only): a transaction "pursuant to, or resulting from, an order of a court or tribunal" is excluded, for example transfers from a deceased estate after a grant of probate, or under family law consent orders. The exclusion covers work done after the order is made, not work to obtain it. It does not apply to items 3 to 9.
• Item 3 exclusions (s 6(5C)): item 3 does not apply where (a) the money is payment for your own goods or services; (b) your business provides no designated service other than item 3 and the money is for payments reasonably incidental to a non-designated service; (c) the money is received or payable under a court or tribunal order; (d) it is a payment to or from a government body, a court or tribunal, a public international organisation or a licensed insurer (s 6(5D)), such as ATO tax payments or ASIC fees; (e) the conduct is another designated service; or (f) the Rules specify the circumstance.
• Paragraph (b) works at firm level: it is only available if the whole entity provides no other designated service, across every practice area. A firm that also provides a registered office address (item 9) or acts as a director or trustee for clients (item 7) cannot use it.
• Insolvency practitioners: changing a company's legal structure is item 6, while restructuring its operations is not. Acting as trustee of a regulated debtor's estate is excluded from item 7. AUSTRAC has separate guidance for insolvency practitioners, linked below.
• The when test: the service starts when you act on instructions and directly advance the outcome, not when you give general advice about it. A client can take advice from you before any designated service starts, and one may never start.

Trust account obligations are a separate regime

Where holding client money is a designated service, it brings the AML/CTF obligations into play. That is a different regime from your professional body or state trust account rules, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

AUSTRAC guidance used for this section:

• Professional designated services
• How designated services apply to insolvency practitioners
• Exemptions from AML/CTF obligations
• Accounting program starter kit: getting started

What to watch for in accounting

Scope is decided per engagement. A firm can have a hundred clients with no obligations and one formation engagement that carries all of them. Two practical consequences follow:

• The same client can be in scope for one engagement and out of scope for another, for example a company formation (item 6) alongside the annual tax return.
• The scoping decision is where this gets recorded. Every matter gets a determination, even when the answer is that it is out of scope. See Creating a matter.

Where to start

In the order you will need them:

1. Obligations overview: the designated service test that decides whether any of this applies to a particular engagement.
2. Enrol with AUSTRAC and Appoint your AMLCO, the first two setup obligations, both of which run to deadlines.
3. Firm setup and Build your program, to get the firm profile and the program in place.
4. Customer due diligence, then Creating a matter and Onboarding a customer to start working.

Related pages

• Real estate, for firms that also act in property transactions.
• Legal, which shares the Table 6 items.
• Deadlines, for the dates that apply to setup.