The ATO undertakes a range of important functions to deliver on its responsibilities as the nation’s principal tax collector, with 5 priority areas identified in 2025–26 for increased organisational focus.
These enterprise priorities are strategically important activities aimed at improving results across our key activities and core business functions, and ultimately helping us to achieve our purpose and our vision. They take into account our capabilities, operating environment and cooperation with partners.
We are dedicated to fulfilling our regulatory responsibilities for the tax system and critical components of the superannuation and registry systems.
In meeting our responsibilities, we acknowledge that most taxpayers are willing to do the right thing and comply with their tax and superannuation obligations. For those who need help with their obligations or when unexpected events make it hard to lodge or pay on time, we are committed to providing support.
Underpinning the delivery of these priorities are our continued advancements in harnessing data and digitalisation and other capabilities to transform our business and to achieve our purpose.
Strengthening payment performance and debt collection
Taxes fund essential services for all Australians, and a key element of our role is to ensure everyone meets their obligations. This includes the obligation to pay taxes owed. While over 90% of tax is paid on time, since 2020 we have seen increased debt levels, with many taxpayers experiencing difficulty getting on top of their payment obligations.
Our Payment Strategy has seen the growth of collectable debt slow over the last 12 months, through:
- increased firmer actions for non-payment
- clear messaging to the community that we will be more active in collecting amounts owed.
We will continue to build on improvements to date through our Payment Strategy, to prevent future debt.
Each interaction with a taxpayer is an opportunity to discuss their obligations and be transparent about the consequences of non-payment. We will support taxpayers who are engaged to get back on track and use targeted firmer actions on those choosing not to engage with us. For this latter group of taxpayers, we will deploy the full powers available to us, including issuing Director Penalty Notices, taking garnishee action and, if necessary, taking wind-up or bankruptcy action.
We will effectively and efficiently pursue outstanding tax and superannuation debts, with our actions clearly demonstrating the consequences of deliberately not paying to deter others from avoiding their payment obligations.
Enhancing counter fraud measures
Around the globe, fraud and serious organised crime is on the increase, fuelled by advancements in technology and digital services, data breaches and fraudsters who can rapidly evolve their tactics and ways of infiltrating the tax system. Traditionally, we have relied on a highly responsive but resource-intensive compliance model to combat these fraudsters, but agile, prolonged and persistent attacks demand a more modern and sustainable response.
We received funding for our Counter Fraud Program to help ensure we take all reasonable measures to prevent, detect and respond to external fraud. We will:
- deploy more advanced controls such as real-time monitoring capabilities, to prevent fraudulent transactions and refunds from being processed
- increase secure messaging, to increase taxpayer visibility and control over activity on their ATO record
- enhance our app, to support individuals to distinguish between a genuine contact from the ATO and an imitation scam call.
These new measures will strengthen existing collaboration with domestic and international partners to identify, disrupt and bring consequence to the most serious offenders, who pose the greatest risk to the tax and superannuation systems.
Establishing Payday Super
Superannuation is one of the most important investments for Australians. Employers that do not meet their obligations can significantly affect an individual’s retirement savings and, ultimately, their financial independence in later years.
In the 2023–24 Budget, the government announced a significant reform to align employers’ payment of Superannuation Guarantee contributions with salary and wages, replacing the current quarterly payment requirement.
The establishment of the Payday Super Program will:
- build a fairer and more efficient superannuation system by ensuring timely and full superannuation payments alongside regular wages, while strengthening our management of superannuation guarantee obligations
- reposition superannuation as a natural part of employees’ pay entitlements.
We are progressing administrative design, planning and preparation activities for implementation of this reform.
Implementing a small business digitalised tax experience
While most small businesses strive to meet their tax obligations, the small business tax gap and tax debt remains high. Collectable debt in Australia is more than $50 billion, of which two-thirds owed relates to small business. Further, around 40% of the small business income tax gap is driven by:
- honest mistakes and misunderstandings
- poor record-keeping
- opportunistic behaviour such as isolated incidents of omitting income and exaggerating business expenses.
We want to help small businesses get it right from the start and stay on track. Building on our strong foundations for digital transformation, we will continue to consult and collaborate as we implement a streamlined, digitalised tax experience with administrative opportunities that leverage technological advancement and data-driven insights to:
- reduce cost and compliance burden
- prevent debt
- enable small business to have greater certainty in meeting their tax obligations correctly and from the start.
Delivering our performance evolution
The APSC’s Capability Review of the ATO listed entity was published on 27 March 2025.
To unlock our full potential as a high-performing organisation, our response to the review, Our Performance Evolution, focuses on priority areas for capability improvement. It adopts a strong focus on working as a united team to deliver improved outcomes for government and for the Australian community.
We will think bigger, act bolder, and deliver together. Through Our Performance Evolution, we will:
- be clear about our strategic direction and better align our resourcing and effort towards realising it
- strengthen our decision-making including appropriate engagement with risk
- build stronger collaboration into business-as-usual
- address key technology irritants to ensure our staff are better equipped to achieve our purpose.
We have devoted significant effort to developing Our Performance Evolution, to inform our actions to strengthen and grow our capability. Through Our Performance Evolution we will be best placed to respond to the challenges posed by the dynamic environment in which we operate – now and into the future.