Our compliance focus for 2010-11 included a considerable effort ensuring that people and businesses affected by natural disasters were given a chance to deal with those impacts. For taxpayers in affected regions we deferred the times of key tax obligations, including lodgments, giving individuals, businesses and communities time to recover.
Shifts in our attention throughout the year reflected changing deployment of our resources - either to address the highest risks or to assist taxpayers and tax practitioners affected by natural disasters.
We also increased our commitment to a range of strategies and activities aimed at improving voluntary compliance and dealing with non-compliance - by actively supporting individuals, businesses and tax practitioners across the community.
We increased our attention on detecting and dealing with over-claimed refunds and cases of potential fraud. Our information-matching activities again increased, further supporting our efforts directed at those involved in the cash economy.
Our interest in wealthy taxpayers and cooperation with other agencies through Project Wickenby continued. We also continued our strong attention on lodgments, employer obligations, superannuation, and GST obligations.
Increasingly, we sought to engage with larger businesses on a prospective, cooperative basis to identify tax risks as early as possible and develop mitigation strategies cooperatively.
Our commitment to transparency regarding our risk concerns and treatment of compliance risks resulted in our implementation of a risk differentiation framework. Under the framework we informed most large businesses about our view of their compliance risk, relative to other large corporates. Where there were concerns with a large taxpayer's risk profile, we discussed the matters with them. Where we had no concerns we advised the taxpayer their return was closed.
The following information contains some of the highlights of the compliance activities we undertook during 2010-11 The information is based on preliminary results. We will publish our final results in the Commissioner of Taxation Annual report 2010-11.
Sections within Appendix
Last Modified: Friday, 1 July 2011