Commissioner’s speech highlights ATO’s focus
The Commissioner of Taxation highlighted the areas in which the ATO has recently increased its focus, including:
- undeclared income
- individuals’ unexplained wealth or lifestyle
- incorrectly claimed private expenses
- unpaid superannuation guarantee, and
- cash-only businesses and those with low usage of merchant banking facilities, with black economy visits to over 2,600 businesses across 8 locations in 2017
The Commissioner also highlighted ongoing ATO concern with respect to the predicted ‘work-related expense claim gap’, which (at least by the ATO’s estimates) could amount to being greater than the ‘large corporate tax gap’ of $2.5 billion of lost revenue.