Vehicle regos point taxman to dodgers
The Australian Taxation Office knows far more than you think, revealing it matched 650 million transactions by taxpayers last year on its way to half a million reviews and audits.
The ATO's annual report shows that matching information from car registrations to investment income netted the Government almost $1.5 billion through the just completed financial year.
The data gleaned from the work resulted in the tax office going through an information matching audit with the tax returns of more than one million taxpayers.
That yielded $521 million in extra tax.
A warning letter was sent to almost 250,000 other Australians after their information was matched against ATO data. These people handed up another $24 million.
And another 3.2 million people who were "non-compliant" but then reported all of their income provided almost $1 billion in extra tax revenue.
The ATO estimates it has collected $4.6 billion in indirect revenue through matching data to tax returns over the past six years.
It also focused attention on corporate Australia and some of the nation's wealthiest residents.
There are about 90,000 people who each control assets worth at least $5 million. With associated companies they contribute about $25 billion in tax. The ATO said these 90,000 people were associated with about 630,000 companies, trusts and other taxable entities.
Through 2013-14, the tax office carried out 3240 compliance activities with wealthy Australians, raising more than $650 million in cash and $1.3 billion in tax liabilities.
Corporate taxpayers received about 136,000 ATO please explain notices, with more than 24,000 audits or investigations which netted $197 million in liabilities.
The hair and beauty industry, the focus of inquiries into the black economy, was targeted with a 65 per cent lift in referrals from the general community last year.
Despite the efforts, the tax office estimates there was a $3.1 billion gap between the amount of GST raised through 2013-14 and what it believed should have flowed back to the States and Territories.
