Most accountants worked out months ago that they were probably fine.
The guidance was clear enough. Tranche 2 captures designated services, not professions. A tax return is not a designated service. Neither is a set of financial statements, and neither is an audit. If that is the bulk of your practice, you read the fact sheet, decided the reforms were somebody else’s problem, and went back to work.
That reading is correct. It is also fragile, and the point at which it stops being correct is more precise than most people realise.
The moment your clock starts
The obligations commenced on 1 July 2026. Among the designated services is this one:
assisting a person in the planning or execution of a transaction, or otherwise acting for or on behalf of a person in a transaction, to sell, buy or otherwise transfer a body corporate or legal arrangement
Read quickly, that looks like it captures every conversation you have ever had about a client selling. It does not, and AUSTRAC has published a worked example about an accounting firm which is worth quoting in full, because almost nobody seems to have seen it:
An accounting firm provides tax advice to a client on the implications of selling a body corporate. While potentially influential to the client deciding whether to sell the body corporate, it doesn’t directly advance any related transaction and there isn’t a transaction at this point.
If it’s clear there is one buyer, and the firm is instructed to act for the client to sell the body corporate to a buyer, the designated service begins from this point.
If there are many potential buyers that have been identified, the designated service would begin when negotiations begin with one or more potential buyers.
So the “should I sell, and what will it cost me in tax” conversation is not regulated. The clock starts when there is an identified buyer and you are instructed to act, or when negotiations open. From that point the regulated work includes representing the client in negotiations, preparing or reviewing the contract, due diligence and valuation in anticipation of sale, FIRB and ASIC work, and preparing for settlement.
This is not compliance advice. Your professional body and your own adviser are better placed than we are on what you specifically must do. What we can tell you is what is happening on live transactions, because we are in the middle of them.
Three reporting entities, and you are nearly last
You are not the only one doing this. Business brokers and legal practitioners were captured by the same reforms, so a single business sale now has three regulated professionals on it, sometimes more once the buyer’s advisers are engaged.
What surprises people is the order. It is not three sets of checks in the same week. They are staggered across the deal, and the sequence runs roughly like this:
| When | Who runs checks | On whom |
|---|---|---|
| Agency agreement signed | The broker | Vendor |
| Vendor engages a solicitor | Vendor’s solicitor | Vendor |
| Buyer identified, negotiations open | Vendor’s accountant | Vendor |
| Offer made | The broker | Buyer |
| Buyer engages advisers | Buyer’s solicitor and accountant | Buyer |
We check the vendor at the agency agreement, which is often months before a buyer exists. You may not be captured until the deal is already moving. By the time your obligation starts, your client has usually been through this twice and has stopped finding it charming.
Note also that each of us checks our own customer, not the other side. The vendor’s accountant does not check the buyer. The buyer’s accountant does.
And before you ask, because everybody does: you cannot simply take a copy of ours. Each of us has to satisfy itself independently. That is the design rather than an oversight. If one file could be passed around the table, one weak set of checks would compromise all three.
Acting for the buyer is a second trigger, and a wider one
If you act for the purchaser rather than the vendor, the same item applies. Sell, buy or otherwise transfer covers both directions.
But there is a second designated service that catches buyer-side accountants and is easy to miss. Creating or restructuring a body corporate or legal arrangement is regulated in its own right. Set up an acquisition company or a trust for a buyer and that is a designated service, separately from any advice on the purchase itself.
The sting is in who your customer is. For creating a company, it is not only the person instructing you. It is also the proposed beneficial owners and directors. For an express trust, it is the proposed trustee, settlor and beneficiaries.
So the client who rings and asks you to set up a bucket company and a trust before settlement has just handed you a customer list, not a customer.
Source of funds is the one that will bite
Everyone focused on identifying the vendor. In practice the harder question sits on the other side of the table.
Buyers are being asked to evidence source of funds and, depending on risk, source of wealth. Some produce it in an afternoon. Some cannot, or will not, and the difference between those two is not always obvious at first. Self-funded buyers, family money, proceeds from a previous sale, offshore funds that are entirely legitimate but slow to document: all of it takes longer than anyone expects.
A deal that is otherwise agreed can now sit for weeks waiting on a document. Warn your vendor clients that the buyer’s paperwork can delay their settlement, and that it is not the broker being difficult. Worth knowing too that if a suspicious matter report is ever made, it is made without telling the client, which is an uncomfortable thought for a firm that has acted for the same family since the nineties.
The structures that stall deals were built by accountants
That is not an accusation. It is the reason you are the only one who can fix them.
Family trusts where the deed has not been read in fifteen years. Share registers that never caught up after a partner left in 2011. Holding structures set up by somebody who has since retired and never questioned since. Almost all of them were built well, for reasons that made complete sense at the time.
Under the old rules that history stayed buried. Beneficial ownership verification digs it up, under time pressure, with a buyer waiting. A structure review two years before a sale is a small job. The same job with a settlement date agreed is a crisis.
Asset sales, and why we check anyway
AUSTRAC is clearer on this than the commentary suggests. The service applies only where the sale, purchase or transfer relates to a controlling interest in a body corporate or legal arrangement. That is an entity changing hands. An asset sale, where the buyer takes the plant, goodwill, contracts and lease and the vendor keeps the company, does not transfer a controlling interest in anything.
On a plain reading, an asset sale is not captured by that item.
We check on every transaction that comes through our doors regardless, asset sale or share sale, without distinction. Deals move between structures during negotiation, entity elements appear where nobody expected them, and the penalties for reading the line the wrong way run to $6.6 million for an individual and $33 million for a body corporate. We would rather carry the cost of checking too often.
We are not telling you to take the same position. We are telling you what ours is, so you know what to expect when your client’s sale reaches us. You can read more about how we handle this on our AML and counter-terrorism financing page.
What we would suggest
Write down which of your services are designated, and when each one starts. The trigger is the service and the moment, not the client and not the invoice.
Start client identification the moment a buyer is named. Not at contract. The cost of being early is an hour. The cost of being late is weeks of settlement delay and a vendor who thinks their accountant is the hold-up.
Review the structures of any client who might sell in the next two years. You built them and you are the only one who can tidy them quietly.
Talk to the broker and the solicitor about timing, not about the work. None of us can share a file or lean on anyone else’s checks. What we can do is stop landing on the same client in the same week with three identical requests and no warning.
Have a client thinking about selling?
The earlier we are in the conversation, the less of this lands on your client at the worst possible moment. If you have a client who may sell in the next couple of years, a confidential chat costs nothing and commits neither of you to anything. Start the conversation here.
Xcllusive Business Sales has been selling Australian businesses for more than twenty years. This article describes what we are observing on live transactions since 1 July 2026 and refers to AUSTRAC’s published guidance on professional designated services. It is not legal or compliance advice and is not a substitute for guidance from your professional body or your own adviser.