I'm a lawyer but this is not specific advice to your circumstances. I would recommend seeking your own legal advice if you are very concerned about it.
Your former accountant likely has a restraint clause as part of his employment contract or the Partnership agreement if he were a Partner.
Generally speaking, this prohibits him from soliciting your business at his new firm. However, as others have pointed out, you are his client and you are free to make your own enquiries as to his whereabouts and seek to transfer your services to his new firm. Depending on your accountant's risk profile or his confidence in the restraint, he may agree to take you on as his client at his new accounting practice or he may politely decline to do so if he is worried about his previous firm suing him for breach of contract.
In reality, restraints are quite difficult to enforce. They generally follow a 'cascade' which starts at the highest level (i.e. he made be restrained from taking all clients in Australia) and Courts tend to view the harsher restraints as unenforceable. The same is true if his restraint was valid for a period of time (again it would cascade, 12, 9, 6, 3 months etc).
You might have seen Andrew Leigh in recent months talk about how the ALP are looking to do away with restraint clauses because it prevents the freedom of movement and stifles competition. So the current trend in the law is definitely to read these clauses down and in any event, you would not be in trouble, your accoutant would be for taking you on at his new firm.
In relation to private rulings, again, I am not a tax lawyer, but if you paid for the private ruling, you would likely be entitled to a copy of it. If it was a private ruling that was obtained by the firm generally and they have deemed your circumstances to be consistent with the ruling, that might be a different story. In any event, the ATO is not necessarily bound by private rulings so you cannot solely rely on it anyway.
Again, none of the above is legal advice and is general in nature only.
Cheers and goodluck.
Hi all,
Apologies if this is too far removed from the purpose of this forum; @Strawman please delete if necessary.
My accountant has unexpectedly left their firm, with very opaque information from the firm itself. Indeed, the PA had been organising meetings for them as of Monday this week (now Thursday), and the firm principal emailed me yesterday to reply to an email "while xxx is absent". Meanwhile, the accountant themself texted me today that they are no longer employed by the firm, and directed me to the firm principal.
For context, my accountant has arranged a moderately complex and aggressive tax strategy. Is the apparently sudden departure, and opaque communication, a red flag re; the firm And/or strategy? I'm guessing either they have messed up badly, or have suddenly resigned to change roles / start a new firm.
Any tips on how to navigate new relationship with the principal and clarify the situation? Am worried that if there are professional issues then my own strategy may be under question.