The world has seen one of the most challenging times in 2020 due to COVID-19. To cope with such a tough situation, governments have provided many financial aids for maintaining economic stability.
At the same time, we saw the Australian Taxation Office and the State Revenue Office be very active in this situation. There were a lot of audit activities during this time. Here are some of the most popular ones.
- Income tax audits and reviews.
- Tax investigations regarding payroll
- Employer obligations audits and reviews.
- BAS audits and reviews.
As most of the businesses in Australia were unable to keep up with the obligations of superannuation guarantee (SG), this fact alone is enough to draw the attention of ATO. The Single Touch Payroll (STP) allows the ATO to keep an eye on JobKeeper overpayments or underpayments. A large number of mismatches were seen in the JobKeeper payments, STP, and Employee Enrolments so, ATO had to take care of it with the help of audits.
To check whether the businesses applying for a scheme were truly eligible for it or not, ATO had to audit many of them.
What about the upcoming year?
The budget of the year 2020 introduced subsidies for helping businesses that have suffered a lot due to this pandemic. And there was additional funding of A$15.1 million to find the people behind the organized crime in taxation and superannuation systems.
So, it is likely that ATO will be even more active in 2021 because it has to find out the loopholes and the persons who tried their best for cheating the economic structure of their country.
ATO has come with new plans that target the groups (private) that are connected to some individual having wealth of more than A$50 million. The effects of this program can be seen very easily right now but it is expected to increase in the coming future.
Take a look at the areas where you will see even more activities:
- Audits of Cash flow boost payment and reviews:
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- ATO is putting a lot of effort into checking whether the entitlements are reaching those who need it the most.
- Payment audits and reviews of JobKeeper:
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- You can see that ATO is always active when it comes to reviewing the government schemes launched for the benefit of the common people. As you already know that a large number of Australian Employers have enrolled for this scheme, ATO is definitely going to perform an audit in this area.
- SG reviews and audits:
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- Everyone is aware of the fact that a lot of people have not met their obligations for SG amnesty. This has happened mostly due to the pandemic but ATO is likely to perform audits in this field.
- STP audits and reviews:
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- The way data is captured is becoming even more complicated as compared to the earlier times. Now the ATO will have more information about people’s activities.
Conclusion:
The ATO was like all other sectors a little inactive this year due to the lockdown. As a result of that, it is being expected that ATO will be very busy in the coming year.