Privately owned and wealthy groups
Privately owned and wealthy groups operate some of Australia's largest and most successful businesses.
We view privately owned and wealthy groups as:
- Australian resident individuals who, together with their business associates, control net wealth over $5 million
- companies and their associated subsidiaries (often referred to as economic groups) with an annual turnover of more than $10 million and that are not public groups or foreign owned.
Our approach is to consider all entities under the control of the individual with the primary decision-making role in the group. This is so we can better understand the behaviours and motivations of the controlling mind behind a private group structure.
We ensure privately owned and wealthy groups pay the right amount of tax and comply with their tax obligations through tax performance programs designed to:
- support participation in the tax system
- help them to get things right
- bring consequence to non-compliance.
Private wealth programs
We focus on the tax obligations of privately owned and wealthy groups through the following tax performance programs:
- Top 500 private groups tax performance program
- Next 5,000 private groups tax performance program
- Medium and emerging private groups tax performance program
- Commercial deals program.
Find out more about the behaviours, characteristics and tax issues that attract our attention.
Top 500 private groups tax performance program
This includes private groups that are not public groups or foreign owned:
- with over $500 million in net assets, regardless of turnover
- with over $200 million in turnover and over $250 million in net assets
- that are market leaders or groups of specific interest.
We engage directly with these groups each year to establish a high level of assurance that they are paying the right amount of tax.
Find out more about the Top 500 private groups tax performance program.
Next 5,000 private groups tax performance program
This includes entities linked to Australian resident individuals who, together with their associates, control wealth of more than $50 million and are not included in the Top 500 private groups tax performance program.
We work with these groups to confirm they are paying the right amount of tax by engaging through tailored reviews that apply either:
- an assurance approach; or
- a risk review approach.
Find out more about the Next 5,000 private groups tax performance program.
Medium and emerging private groups tax performance program
This includes:
- private groups linked to an Australian resident individual who, together with their associates, control wealth between $5 million and $50 million
- Australian businesses with annual turnover of more than $10 million that are not public or foreign-owned and are not linked to a group in the Top 500 or Next 5,000 private groups tax performance programs.
Medium and emerging private groups represent most of the privately owned and wealthy groups population. We use enhanced data and analytics to understand the operating environment of these groups, identify and address tax risks and design tailored approaches to mitigate those risks.
Find out more about the Medium and emerging private groups tax performance program.
Commercial deals program
Privately owned and wealthy groups can get tax certainty on significant business transactions through early engagement and pre-lodgment agreements.
We can:
- help resolve tax technical issues relating to the deal
- work towards agreement on the tax position the group intends to take
- help the group meet tax obligations and reduce the likelihood of a review.
Find out more about the Commercial deals program.
Our support
Our tax performance programs are designed to ensure privately owned and wealthy groups pay the right amount of tax and comply with their tax obligations. These programs focus on behaviours, risk and tax issues that attract our attention.
We recognise most taxpayers do the right thing, but where we see deliberate tax avoidance, we act to address it with our Tax Avoidance Taskforce.