ATO Releases Latest Tax Statistics

by Mike Godfrey, for LawAndTax-News.com, Washington

20 March 2009

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released the latest edition of Taxation statistics 2006-07 - its most comprehensive statistical publication.

Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo said Taxation statistics 2006-07 provides even more detailed information about Australia’s tax, superannuation and excise systems.

“Taxation statistics provides a high level of transparency about the operation of these important laws,” he explained, adding: “This year Taxation statistics has been further improved to include new chapters on the cost of compliance, pay as you go withholding as well as more detailed HELP/HECS tables.”

According to the publication:

Personal tax

For the 2006-07 income year, 11.8 million people lodged income tax returns.

Individuals claimed AUD34.1bn (USD23.4bn) in total deductions, including AUD14.2bn (USD9.7bn) in work-related expenses – an increase of 8.4% on the previous year.

Around 72% of individuals lodged their tax return via a tax agent, however the number of people lodging their tax return via e-tax, increased to around 15.8% in 2007.

The average time taken for people to repay their HELP debt was 7.5 years.

Company tax

Companies reported a total income of AUD2,044bn (USD1.4bn), a 13.4% increase from 2005-06.

Companies with a total income of AUD250m (171m) or more represented 0.1% of the total number of companies but accounted for 60.3% of total company net tax.

Superannuation

Self managed super funds remained the most common type of super fund being numerically 97.8% of all super funds.

Recommended