Compliance program 2012-13 now available

19 July 2012

Tax Commissioner, Michael D'Ascenzo released the Compliance program 2012-13. It highlights the compliance risks attracting our attention and the actions we are taking to deter, detect and deal with those who do not meet their tax and superannuation responsibilities.

This year we will put under the microscope:

• tax fraud and avoidance schemes
• people who fail to declare all their income
• the highly wealthy
• property-related tax issues
• employers who do not meet their superannuation obligations.

Focus areas identified as significant risks to tax and super compliance this year include:

• occupations that have shown a pattern of relatively high levels of work-related claims, including IT managers, plumbers and defence force personnel
• high income earners involved in tax avoidance schemes
• unreported cash transactions within the plastering and café industries
• contractor arrangements, in particular in the construction industry
• the self-managed superannuation fund sector
• employer obligations for superannuation in high risk industries.

Stopping false claims and identity crime are a continuing priority this year, with us increasingly analysing and matching information provided by third parties.

Tax practitioners play a vital role in supporting the integrity of our tax and superannuation systems and influencing proper participation, and we are dedicated to continuing to work together and support you in that role. To this end, we have developed a tax practitioner action plan, which is a focus area in the tax practitioner chapter of our compliance program.

We have worked with the professional associations through our peak tax practitioner consultative groups, to test the compliance risks that we had identified and sought their views on other risk areas we should consider. These conversations proved beneficial in that they broadly confirmed our areas of focus as those rightly requiring attention.

We also asked some individual tax practitioners to help us make the compliance program publication more reader-friendly and relevant to your needs. We hope that the changes we made in response to this feedback will be apparent and that you find them an improvement.

Bruce Quigley
Second Commissioner, Compliance