Commissioner of Taxation Annual Report 2006-07

Significant factors influencing performance against Output 3

Two major issues affected our performance in 2006-07. The first related to delays in recruiting suitable employees to deliver new policy initiatives announced in the Budget and throughout the year. With employment rates at historically high levels, we were competing in an extremely tight labour market and were unable to increase employee numbers as quickly as we had planned. This put considerable pressure on our ability to deliver on our commitments to government.

The second major issue related to issues with deploying new systems as part of our change program. This is one of the biggest deployments of its kind undertaken anywhere in the world and we experienced some teething problems. This affected productivity in some of our operational areas more than we had anticipated.

The effective closure of tobacco production in Australia during the year required special attention in phasing out the existing excise arrangements.

Sections within 2.5 Output 3: Compliance assurance and support for revenue collection

• Highlights
• Significant factors influencing performance against Output 3
• Output 3 corporate priorities
• Provide support to taxpayers
• Review consultative forums
• Detect and discourage tax evasion in the cash economy
• Check the compliance of wealthy individuals
• Deal with promoters of aggressive tax planning schemes
• Combat tax crime
• Project Wickenby
• Combat fraud and evasion in areas such as tax havens and identity crime
• Ensure profits on sale of investments are declared
• Verify large business compliance and foster cooperation
• Focus on illicit tobacco
• Focus on our position on tax laws
• Enhance our risk and intelligence capability
• Output 3 performance
• Output 3 active compliance results
• Our approach to active compliance
• Results
• Output 3 compliance challenges
• Output 3 reporting on specific legislation
• Fringe benefits tax
• Income tax
• Petroleum resource rent tax
• Wine tax
• Use of assumed identities
• Providing information to law enforcement agencies
• Australian Security Intelligence Organisation access to tax information