Tax Commissioner for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), Michael D’Ascenzo, released on Wednesday the Compliance program 2008-09 and announced the Tax Office will focus on income tax, tax havens, dodgy tax schemes, wealthy individuals, large business and the cash economy in the coming year.
“Our compliance program is an important part of our ‘prevention is better than cure’ approach to tax administration, in which we seek to help people understand and meet their tax and superannuation obligations at the lowest possible cost to them,” Mr D’Ascenzo said, going on to state:
“By publishing our compliance program, we are letting the community know where we will focus our attention and the action we will take so people know which areas of risk they should avoid.
“This year we are expanding our coverage of income tax compliance issues across the board with the support of additional government funding," he added.
D'Ascenzo went on to explain:
“We are continuing our strong focus on detecting and discouraging the abusive use of tax havens and dodgy tax schemes. We are also encouraging people who may have done the wrong thing to come forward before we contact them and take advantage of reduced penalties for coming clean.
“This year we will expand our review of executives and directors to include senior executives of private and foreign owned companies, focusing on their remuneration packages and any failure to report equity benefits and cash or share bonuses.
“We are also examining the compliance risks associated with partnership and trust distributions and I encourage tax agents to discuss this matter with their clients and advise them to come forward if distributions have not been correctly declared."
“Large business issues on our agenda include promoting good corporate governance and looking at global corporate restructures that shift assets offshore," he continued, going on to conclude:
“We will tackle the unfair cash economy practices that adversely impact many small businesses by working with more industries to develop benchmarks that businesses can use as a guide to getting their tax right.
“This will be backed up by greater use of data matching to more effectively identify and target people who may have under-reported income or over-claimed expenses with more than 5,000 cash economy audits or reviews.
“We are also improving our assistance program to support small businesses with a particular emphasis on helping businesses get started and stay on track," D'Ascenzo finished.
The full text of the ATO's 2008/09 Compliance Program can be found in the Tax News Resources section.
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