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So, work is really stressing me out right now.
For context, I'm a junior tax accountant, and I recently had some client work delegated to me for a client experiencing some financial struggles. Aside from preparing their business activity statements and income tax returns and so on, one of the tasks delegated to me was to add a small amount owed to their pre-existing payment plan with the ATO (Australian Taxation Office), where the client is supposed to pay off a tax debt in monthly instalments. I called the ATO on the tax agent line, and was informed that I needed to cancel the previous payment plan and renegotiate a new one. Because of some past defaults on the client's end, we were incapable of setting up a payment plan via the tax agent portal, and had to call via phone.
I informed my superior of this fact, who then gave me the go-ahead to re-negotiate the payment plan with the ATO. Note, my superior has worked on this client for longer, and has a more detailed knowledge of their financial situation than I do. I have also never negotiated a payment plan with the ATO before (they have), and was not provided any context regarding how to deal with them. So I pretty much do as I'm directed, and attempt to set up the new payment plan, but the ATO refuses to provide assent to establishing any new payment plan because they are unsure of the client's ability to make the payments on said payment plan. At this point, the original payment plan has also been cancelled, so the client no longer has their original deal either despite the fact that it was previously agreed on.
Dealing with the ATO is a bit like dealing with a little autocrat where the rules of the game are entirely determined by them. When you're dealing with most creditors you typically negotiate the cancellation of the old arrangement and the formation of the new one at the same time, and sign off on it all at once as a legally binding contract. With the ATO, the very process of renegotiating the terms of your plan has the distinct possibility of leaving you stranded, with zero recourse to any agreement at all. It’s not a negotiation between parties, it’s a rent-seeking coalition that has the power to unilaterally decide whether or not to grant you clemency, and whose leniency (or lack thereof) heavily depend on how their revenue collection targets have been set. The issue is not so much that they're severe on taxpayers as much as it does that they're fundamentally unpredictable and unaccountable, leaving people in a perpetual state of uncertainty regarding what one should expect from them.
Eventually, the client pays the original debt they want to add to their payment plan, but their original payment plan is also cancelled so they have a larger tax debt to pay off. And at this point, I'm wondering how much responsibility for this entire shitshow can be hung on me. I've kept my organisation in the loop throughout, and I've taken a huge amount of screenshots of Teams chats specifically showing that I informed my superiors of the requirement to cancel the prior plan and was still instructed to set up the new payment. I still feel some level of responsibility for the entire thing, despite the fact that I was basically doing exactly what people in my organisation had asked me to do, and have zero control over my client's financial decisions or the ATO's dictates.
Honestly panicking a little bit. It often feels like much of the work that more senior accountants don't want to do gets unceremoniously offloaded onto me even when I have limited experience doing the work, I'm given little to no guidance as to how to do it, and I'm left in a potentially precarious position when things go wrong.
This is a fairly standard slice of life for a conscientious ethical white collar professional working in Australia (and probably much of the West). There's a fair bit more to say about the ATO, which as far as I know is inscrutable and unaccountable in the way the OP has said.
OP, the world won't end and neither will your career. This won't fall on you. You're predicting (and wisely planning for) the worst case scenario which will never eventuate. Senior professionals not training or preparing juniors under them is unfortunately business as usual. You've done the best you can with what you have in terms of time, resources and knowledge. Rest well. If the client comes after the company, they won't come after the junior.
Also, well done on covering your arse by saving correspondence and secreting it away on your private servers away from the company. In my career, I've never needed to use a security blanket like that, but I've heard stories and so I still think it's best practice for any white collar professional getting directed to do something they are not comfortable with.
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Objectively speaking, you're not responsible for any of this. But your boss and company may very well throw you under the bus anyway.
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