The Tax Office is continuing its efforts to catch out businesses pocketing cash off the books. A year ago now, I posted that the data matching program had expanded to cover RTA records among other things. Now the program has extend its reach again with the introduction of two new initiatives.
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The program now includes data from banks that identify credit card and EFTPOS sales made by Australian businesses, and
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data from the sale of plasterboard in NSW to plasterboard installers.
The information obtained is compared with taxpayer information and the ATO’s small business benchmarks to identify the naughty businesses which have not reported all their income.
Some businesses identified at risk of potentially under reporting their income may be contacted by the ATO and asked to consider making a voluntary disclosure of any under reported amounts. In other cases the data obtained will also be used to support default assessments of a business’s tax liabilities, which could mean the business is then liable for penalties as well as any unpaid tax.
To find out more about the ATO’s data matching program, speak with your tax agent or head on over to the Tax Office website at www.ato.gov.au.
Article by Christie Lewis
Christie is Practice Manager at Alan Lewis Accountants . Besides accounting, her passion is for all things small business (and blogging, of course). You can contact Christie directly at christie@lewistaxation.com.au.
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