Australian Online Courses

The worst online learning I have come across, support is zero, contact is zero, portal is poorly designed and for the $500 they did get from me before I stopped payments got me log in details to the portal, that is it and then they have the hide to have a debt collector ring me as far as I am concerned contract was null and void as the did not stand up to their commitment. If they persist in recovering the remainder I will not hesitate in getting in touch with the ombudsman.

I did the AOC Tax Preparation course (Unit 3) (“Prepare Tax Documentation for Individuals”). In summary, this was a good course, especially if you want something immediately available. I would recommend it for an overview of tax preparation.

After reading the few negative reviews for AOC (courses not stated), and from some bad experiences with other training courses, I wasn’t sure, but the course was online and the dates very flexible so I took a chance and booked anyway (also unhappy customers are more likely to leave reviews than happy customers are).

I’ve now finished the course. It took me about 2 months, but only because I had other commitments. A good half of that was spent on the assessments, which required about 16 pages of writing all up, and some internet research.
I can’t really gauge the difficulty of the course because I had some background in tax already. I found it quite straightforward reading. I think it would be hard for a non-native-English speaker.
It was marked very quickly and I have my digital certificate already, with the hard copy coming soon in the post. Unlike my previous courses, the tutor didn’t arbitrarily take off marks for unnecessary personal/subjective reasons, such as because they liked a different writing style. The tutors seemed professional and the marking fair.

Tutor assistance: I had a few questions and the tutors replied promptly (within 24 hours). They generally took the time to understand what I was asking, rather than fire off an automatic glib response. I got the impression that student help was taken seriously by my tutors.

Course material: I attended an ITP tax prep class several years ago, which took 2-3 months and was very detailed. This online course was very different.
This AOC course was in depth and I found it informative and interesting, but unlike the ITP course it has no details of specific deductions, all the ins and outs of meal allowances, etc. Also not everything that it says is covered, is actually covered. It has a lot of generalised and background information, and the ATO viewpoint on various issues, but no information regarding this year’s changes to offsets, deductions, thresholds, Medicare etc. I was fine with that, and I feel the course gave me something that the ITP course didn’t, which was a useful, background, bigger picture understanding of the many aspects of tax preparation. It would have been a very good complement to the ITP course.

It does cover what you need to know, such as CGT, depreciation, PSI versus contractor, what makes a deduction allowable, GST and BAS statements, offsets etc, but for specific current details you would need to look elsewhere (which shouldn’t be difficult).
There seemed to be a lot of overviews of business accounting, which seemed over the top for simple tax preparation, but will probably come in useful.
You also need to read around the subject, but the ATO website is good for that. I googled anything I didn’t understand.

Some parts of the assessment were odd. For example the information on balance sheet credits and debits could do with a thorough revamp, or else not to be part of the assessment. Some parts seem to assume you are doing the course in a work environment, and perhaps this is who the course is aimed at. So for example I needed to write to the tutors and ask them to send a fillable tax return for one of the assessments, and it seems slightly unhelpful that this isn’t sent automatically.
But this was a minor thing that didn’t hold me up at all, and otherwise I had really no criticism or complaints! It was a much better and more thorough course than I was expecting!

So in summary, the pros: Flexible, online, helpful tutors, good background for tax preparation, generally overall good value and a useful course. I learnt a lot I didn’t know before.

Cons: Nothing much really. Before being fully competent as a tax preparer, you would need to read up on this year’s thresholds and deductions, and you would need to read up on deductions in general, but that applies every year anyway, as the tax rules change every year!

We browsed the web and found that this business has an active Facebook page. We have discovered that this business has SSL (secure sockets layer), which means that this business handles your data, such as personal information or credit card details, with secure connection. We discovered that the domain for this business is relitevely new, which means that it could be a start-up business that does not yet have a huge amount of customers.