Tax Office Audit Targets for 2009

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The Australian Taxation Office will be focusing on the following for the 2009 tax year:

Individuals

This year the Tax office will pay particular attention to:

• Investors, including
  Capital gains from the sale of property and shares
  • Data matching will be expanded to match information on asset transactions from state and territory title and revenue offices, securities exchanges and share registries and reports from managed funds.
    Reviews of at-risk cases this year will include individuals who made a gain from disposing of assets to invest in superannuation.
  Rental income and expenses, in particular:
  • Focus will be on landlords who incorrectly claim deductions for interest or those whose claims for capital works exceed the construction expenditure.
    Looking for cases where initial repair or renovation costs are incorrectly claimed as repairs and maintenance instead of being attributed to the capital cost of the property.
    Non-deductible claims for body corporate fees to cover the cost of capital improvements on capital repairs.
    Borrowing expenses where claims are incorrectly claimed for stamp duty on the purchase of the property title.
    Unusual patterns of rental claims.
  Superannuation contributions that exceed contribution limits
  Monitoring of aggressive new financial products
• Executives and directors
  • Expansion of the review of the compliance of senior executives and directors of public companies is being expanded to private companies and resident executives and directors of foreign-owned companies. In particular the focus is on remuneration packages and any failure to report equity benefits and cash or share bonuses.
    Checking the returns of individuals involved in takeovers to ensure income and capital gains crystallised by those transactions are correctly reported.
• Work-related expenses
  • Undertaking reviews and audit activities, particularly in relation to nurses, medical practitioners and chefs.
    Looking at anomalous or 'out of pattern' claims for self-education, car and travel expenses.
• Refund fraud
  • Examination of refunds that suggest a pattern of poor practice by certain tax agents.
    Taking rigorous action against people who prepare returns for others without being a registered tax agent.