If you’re using Commonwealth Bank’s (CBA) open banking to connect your accounts in TaxTank, you might have noticed complications when linking both personal and sole trader business accounts under the same login. Unfortunately, CBA has not taken steps to resolve this issue, leaving customers without a seamless way to access their own financial data. Here’s why this is happening and what we are doing about it.
What the current issue is
CBA follows the Consumer Data Right (CDR) rules, which allow individuals to share data for both personal and business accounts. However, for sole traders using a single banking login, CBA's approach creates unnecessary barriers to accessing data.
Here’s how CBA handles this:
Sole traders operating under personal accounts: Since these accounts are technically in the individual’s name, they are treated under CDR rules for individuals. This means there’s no ability to set up a “nominated representative” to authorise data sharing as other entities have.
Profile selection step: If your CBA banking ID gives you access to multiple customer profiles (such as both personal and business accounts), CBA forces you to choose a profile before selecting the accounts to share. This restriction makes it impossible to connect both profiles simultaneously.
Basiq limitations: TaxTank’s open banking provider, Basiq, does not currently allow multiple open banking connections to the same bank under one user ID. As a result, you can’t link both personal and sole trader business profiles at the same time, even though CBA could enable this functionality.
What this means for you
If you’re experiencing trouble syncing both your personal and sole trader business CBA accounts in TaxTank, it’s because of this forced profile selection step and the way Basiq handles connections.
While CBA will not provide a proper fix for sole traders, we at TaxTank believe that accessing your financial data shouldn’t be this complicated. That’s why we are actively investigating an alternative solution to bypass these restrictions and ensure seamless access to your bank transactions.
The workaround
While we work on a more permanent fix, here’s what you can do in the meantime:
Manually connect and disconnect your different profiles (personal and sole trader business) when needed.
Wait 24 hours after disconnecting before reconnecting to allow transactions to be delivered properly.
We know this isn’t an ideal solution, and frankly, it shouldn’t be necessary. We’re committed to creating a better way to access your data, and we appreciate your patience as we develop a long-term fix. Stay tuned for updates!