Snap- The ATO are watching you… Closely

This is used by the ATO to identify taxpayers who are currently not registered to pay tax and should be. This electoral role also provides the ATO with your occupation and residential address. For example, instances of overseas and foreign investment and people who are avoiding paying superannuation and tax. This is also used where the details of the person need to be updated and tracing taxpayers who have outstanding obligations.

The main area and strategy as shown in the 2015 article for overseas investors and their behaviors. You can review the article here. The main targets are companies and individuals who are not reporting all of their foreign income. As advised in the 2015 article, if you do have overseas income, it  important you voluntarily let the ATO know the income that needs to be reported.

When a business discloses an invoice and receipt, the ATO are routinely collecting data on the payments to match employer obligations. This will help determine if people are failing to report income and payments, tax due and lodging tax returns/GST obligations. They are tracking everything from telephone number, dates of payments and the address of the contractor.

The information collected will be used to cross reference data collected in other areas. For instance, let’s say a contractor is reporting his income as $20,000 in a shorter period on a credit card, this information could flag onto the ATO system. The information here will make sure each person pays all their tax obligations, identify re-registered/liquidated businesses still trading and “cash only” businesses.

The data matching completed here is to ensure businesses/sole traders are complying with their tax and super obligations including tax credits, fringe benefits tax, luxury car tax and fuel schemes. Similar to the credit/debit card transactions, it is used by the ATO to identify taxpayers whose purchases do not commensurate with the income they have reported.

It is also used by the ATO to track dealers, fleet managers etc. to track when the wealth of an individual is trying to be concealed with the use of interposed proxy ownership.

The tracking of shares and securities should be no surprise to most Australians and has been ongoing since 2006. The main focus for the ATO is the Capital Gains Tax (CGT). As taxpayers can hold shares from as way back as to September 1985 which is when CGT was introduced, the data can be obtained from back then. The ATO are tracking over 61 million transactions.