Tax Office Audit Targets for 2010
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The Australian Taxation Office will be focusing on the following for the 2010 tax year:
Individuals
This year the Tax office will pay particular attention to:
- Investors, including
Capital gains and losses
- Inform people who purchased investment properties, shares or units in a managed fund of capital gains tax obligations if they dispose of these assets
- Provide practical tips detailing when people can claim losses and how to correctly calculate them
- Retail investment products
- Focus will be on retail investment products, including managed investment schemes, to identify arrangements that promise tax benefits that may not be available under the law.
- Review of tax returns to identify claims related to retail investment products to ensure claims are properly available under the law
- Superannuation contributions that exceed contribution limits
- 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 truck drivers, sales and marketing managers, sales representatives, and electricians.
- International Dealings
- Matching information supplied by overseas revenue agencies and AUSTRAC against income tax returns to identify unreported foreign income, including bank interest, dividends, pensions, salary and wages.
- Refund fraud
- Implementation of new technologies to identify fraud by reviewing returns lodged through e-tax and other channels using automated analytic models designed to identify potentially unregistered preparers and cases of identity theft.
- Taking rigorous action against people who prepare returns for others without being a registered tax agent
