The gender gap in tax agent registration is wider than you think - and here’s why

There are some numbers that look harmless at first glance - until you actually sit with them.

The Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) released data showing there are 46,751 registered tax agents and 17,199 BAS agents in Australia. But scroll to the gender breakdown, and things get a little more revealing.

The gender ratio among individual tax agents is sitting at 70:30 male to female. That flips entirely when you look at BAS agents, where women dominate at 86:14 female to male. And when you combine both, the total registered agents are close to even at 49:51 male to female.

On paper, that might seem balanced. But dig deeper and the structural imbalance becomes clear, especially when you realise most of the authority, regulation and client load sits with tax agents, not BAS agents.

This isn’t just an issue of representation. It’s a signal of something deeper in how the licensing system is designed, how experience is measured, and how gendered pathways shape who gets to progress in the accounting profession.

What’s actually going on here?

Let’s start with the structure. To become a registered tax agent in Australia, you need either:

• A degree and significant supervised experience; or

• To be a member of a recognised professional association (like CPA, CA or IPA), with a specific number of hours worked in a full-time capacity.

Sounds fair on the surface.

But here’s the practical barrier: that experience must be full-time.

If you’re an experienced female accountant who took time off or worked part-time while raising children, your years of experience often don’t count. You either need to redo courses, rejoin a body you may have let lapse, or go through a drawn-out requalification process.

Many don’t bother.

So they register as a BAS agent instead, even though they might be qualified, capable, and experienced enough to be a tax agent. This helps explain the heavy skew toward women in the BAS category.

“If you're an experienced female accountant who is a member of a professional body, unless you go back and do make-up courses, you cannot obtain tax agent registration through the experience pathway.”

“The reason why is that the experience must be full-time. This issue has been raised with the TPB but nothing happens.”

The system penalises part-time workers

This is where the licensing process actively disadvantages women.

Part-time experience isn't given equal weight, even when the quality of work is equivalent. That creates a structural choke point for anyone who took time away from full-time employment, which statistically, continues to be women in this profession.

There have been repeated calls to fix this, to allow for equivalent experience recognition or a more flexible accreditation process. So far, very little has changed.

The result? We’ve got a 70:30 male-to-female ratio in one category, and an 86:14 female-to-male ratio in the other.

“This is pure sexism built into licensing pathways.”

“This issue has been raised by membership bodies consistently but nothing changes.”

But that’s not the only issue

Another contributor to the skewed numbers is how registrations are counted.

Every tax agent can register individually, but they can also register again under a

company, branch, or partnership structure. That means a single practitioner might be counted multiple times across the TPB register - once for themselves, once for their company, and again if they’re listed in a partnership.

So while the numbers show over 63,000 total registrations, the number of

active agents with clients is significantly lower, just 37,401.

It’s unclear how many of these “company” or “partnership” registrations are just administrative duplicates. But it does distort the bigger picture. And it makes it harder to measure how many individual women are actually being represented - especially in more senior or principal roles.

“Every company/branch/partnership agent is technically a duplicate of an individual registration.”

“I wonder if some individuals are lodging their family members under their own registrations, which distorts the true numbers.”

Let’s talk about visibility

The comments in the Facebook group

Small Business Accountants & Advisers Brain Trust, Australia made it clear: a lot of people were surprised by the male dominance in tax agent registrations.

But for many women in the industry, this wasn’t news. It was just more data confirming what they’ve already experienced.

There are fewer women at the top end of the profession. There are fewer women running multi-agent practices. And there are fewer women in key regulatory, software, and advisory roles across the industry.

This isn’t about capability or ambition. It’s about access, and a system that wasn’t built for the modern career trajectory of women in accounting.

“Your surprise at the gender ratios is male privilege showing. This is not surprising to me at all.”

“I think that proves in a way that women are generally more micro thinkers and men are more macro.”

The age question no one’s answered yet

One of the more interesting threads in the discussion was around the age of the current agent base.

There’s no published data from the TPB on age distribution. But many accountants suspect a large chunk of registered agents are nearing or past retirement age. The concern is that many of these agents have remained on the register despite having no clients, and when they do step away, it will reveal a workforce gap that’s been hidden by legacy data.

This matters because most of the current workforce planning assumes things are stable. But if we see a rapid drop-off of older, male tax agents over the next 5-10 years (especially those with a solo practice), we could be left with a shortage of mid-career agents, particularly women, who aren’t yet fully licensed to step in.

“It happened with the teachers. Pre-COVID we had too many. A large proportion were at retirement age. They all retired and now we have a massive shortage.”

“Has the gender split changed much in the last 5 years? I think it will shift rapidly as older male agents retire.”

So what needs to change?

It’s easy to look at these stats and say, “That’s just how it is.”

But that’s exactly the kind of passive thinking that leaves entire groups of practitioners underrepresented and underserved.

Here’s what we could do instead:

• Reform the experience requirements. Count part-time experience fairly. The idea that part-time doesn’t equal competency is outdated.

• Simplify licensing re-entry. For professionals returning from leave or career breaks, there should be a clear, supportive path back - not a maze of red tape.

• Encourage mentoring and sponsorship. Senior women in BAS roles could be empowered to take the leap into tax agent registration with the right guidance and backing.

• Publish age and exit data. The TPB should release demographic data to help the industry plan for succession, transition, and training needs.

• Recognise systemic bias. We can’t fix what we don’t acknowledge. Gendered pathways aren’t just about preference - they’re shaped by policy.

It’s not just a gender issue - it’s a workforce issue

If the current pathway blocks women from becoming tax agents, the industry loses out on talent. Firms miss future partners. Clients miss out on diverse perspectives. And the profession becomes less sustainable long term.

Right now, BAS agent numbers are strong, but the authority, scope, and commercial opportunities are still weighted toward tax agents.

Unless that balance changes, we risk creating a two-tiered system: one where men dominate senior roles with more authority, and women are siloed into narrower scopes of work.

That’s not a healthy or equitable system. And it’s not one that reflects the values most firms say they want to uphold.

Final thoughts

This data isn’t just academic. It’s telling us something important about where the accounting profession is today and what kind of future we’re building.

If we want more women running firms, leading change, and shaping the industry, we need to clear the barriers that stop them before they even get started.

Licensing is a good place to begin.