How we notify the public
The ATO will notify the public of our intention to collect 2024–25 to 2026–27 offshore merchant data by:
- publishing a notice in the Federal Register of LegislationExternal Link gazette in the week starting 20 October 2025
- publishing this data-matching program protocol on our website at How we use data matching
- advising the data providers that they
- can notify their clients of their participation in this program
- should update their privacy policies to note that personal information is disclosed to the ATO for data-matching purposes.
Gazette notice
The following information about the data-matching program appears as a gazette notice in the Federal Register of Legislation.
Gazette notice: Commissioner of Taxation - Notice of an offshore merchant data-matching program 20 October 2025
- The ATO will acquire merchant data from the big 4 Australian banks; Australian and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac Banking Corporation for 2024–25 through to 2026–27.
The data items include:
- the name of the offshore entity or other descriptors of the offshore entity and the merchant country
- merchant city
- merchant acquirer code
- merchant category code
- contact details
- mailing addresses
- phone numbers
- email addresses
- the total aggregated value of the transactions in Australian dollars for each offshore entity for the requested period
- the count of transactions for each offshore entity
- all currencies used other than AUD.
We estimate that records relating to approximately 9,000 offshore merchants will be obtained each financial year.
This program follows the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guidelines on data matching in Australian Government administration (2014) (the guidelines). The guidelines include standards for the use of data matching as an administrative tool in a way that:
- complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act)
- is consistent with good privacy practice.
A full copy of the ATO’s privacy policy can be accessed at your privacy.