Program objectives

The objectives of the sharing economy - accommodation data matching program are to:

• Promote voluntary compliance and increase community confidence in the integrity of the tax system.
• Identify and educate those individuals failing to meet their registration and/or lodgment obligations and assist them to comply.
• Gain insights from the data that may help to develop and implement treatment strategies to improve voluntary compliance; which may include educational or compliance activities as appropriate.
• Obtain intelligence to increase the ATO’s understanding of the behaviours and compliance profiles of individuals and businesses that provide services within the sharing economy.
• Ensure through compliance activities that short term rental providers comply with their lodgment, correct reporting and payment of taxation obligations.

The ATO is seeking to obtain external data to cross-reference with its own data to identify relevant cases for administrative action, including compliance and educational strategies.

How the data will be used

The data acquired will be used initially to identify and inform people who rent out all or a part of their property about their taxation obligations as part of an information and education campaign.

Compliance action may be initiated based on the data acquired.

Learn more about what we will do before amending a return.

Previous programs

No previous data matching activities have been conducted on the sharing economy – accommodation market sector.

Other sharing economy data matching protocols have been published in 2015 and 2017 for the ride sourcing industry.

The data sets requested under this program protocol will also include data from sharing economy platforms and/or the financial institutions they use.