The Tax Office have indicated three target occupations this year, they are
The Tax Office will pay close attention to claims made for taxpayers with these occupations, particularly cars and travel expenses as well as deductions for home office, mobile phone and internet expenses.
The reasons for the ATO choice of these occupations
They are writing to a further group of 100,000 taxpayers outlining common errors that are made when claiming work related expenses for their occupations.
The Tax Office matches over 40 million transactions to taxpayers’ returns looking for undeclared income. They match the income to taxpayers’ returns and send out an audit letter requesting the taxpayer verify the non declared income.
The main areas are:
The Government is working hard to ensure that tax havens now share information to ensure that taxpayers, who are using havens to try to avoid tax, are brought into the net. These 16 new Tax Havens have been signed to share information in the past 12 months
Over 1.5 million taxpayers claimed rental deductions last year in excess of $25 billion.
The ATO will be writing to 110,000 people, who have purchased a new rental property in the past 12 months with general advice on claiming rental property deductions for the first time.
Taxpayers should continue to claim what they are entitled to, they just need to make sure that the claims are correct and that they have the right documents and receipts to support the claims.
Taxpayers should make sure they declare all their world wide income, if they do not and the Tax Office find out interest and penalties will apply, and penalties could be as much as 200% of the tax avoided.