Australia To Consolidate Tax Secrecy And Disclosure Law

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

19 March 2009

Australian Assistant Treasurer, Chris Bowen, has released for public comment an exposure draft Tax Laws Amendment (Confidentiality of Taxpayer Information) Bill 2009.

Additionally, Bowen has also released the explanatory materials that propose to implement the single and consolidated framework outlined in the Treasury discussion paper released in 2006, to govern the protection and disclosure of taxpayer information received by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in the course of administering the taxation laws.

"The government affirms the importance of maintaining a high level of protection of information provided by taxpayers," Mr Bowen explained.

"In standardizing taxation secrecy and disclosure provisions currently found across 18 taxation Acts, the new framework is intended to address inconsistencies and ambiguities with the current provisions that have been enacted over a long time and in a number of different drafting styles", he continued, adding:

"The new framework will provide greater clarity and certainty to taxpayers, the ATO and users of taxpayer information and will reduce the volume and complexity of the taxation law."

In addition to standardizing existing taxation secrecy and disclosure provisions, Bowen explained that the new framework also makes it clear that the future disclosure of taxpayer information should only be permitted where the public benefit from the disclosure outweighs taxpayer privacy.

Other key features of the new framework include that:

• it maintains current levels of disclosures that can be made by the ATO to other government agencies;
• it introduces some new disclosure provisions, where the public benefit outweighs taxpayer privacy;
• it includes clear rules to govern the on-disclosure of taxpayer information provided by the ATO to another agency or entity;
• it clarifies that there is no prohibition on the disclosure of taxpayer information that is lawfully available to the public; and
• it provides that a taxpayer's consent can not in and of itself authorize the disclosure of their information.

The government is now seeking submissions from interested parties on the exposure draft Bill and explanatory materials.

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