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Tax Avoidance Taskforce

Tax Avoidance Taskforce's role and results in ensuring multinationals and large businesses pay the right tax.

Last updated 12 July 2023

About the Tax Avoidance Taskforce

The Tax Avoidance Taskforce ensures multinational enterprises, large public and private businesses (and associated individuals) pay the right amount of tax in Australia. Formed in 2016, it enhances and extends our existing activities to eradicate illegal and fraudulent tax arrangements. The taskforce bolsters our pre-existing efforts in tackling tax avoidance.

The taskforce aims to:

  • detect tax avoidance to protect revenue and maintain the integrity of the tax system
  • increase transparency about how we assess risk and administer the tax system
  • develop a better understanding of commercial drivers and the industries in which taxpayers operate
  • improve our data, analytics, risk, and intelligence capabilities to decide on and manage tax avoidance risk
  • keep the community informed of our work in making public and private groups and wealthy individuals pay the right amount of tax in Australia.

The taskforce plays a critical role to ensure that large businesses and wealthy individuals pay the right amount of tax in Australia. We are also focused on targeting promoters of tax avoidance who support or promote illegal behaviours and arrangements. We work with our partner agencies and other jurisdictions to protect the integrity of the tax system for all Australians.

The Australian Government funded the taskforce with $679 million over 4 years in 2016. In the 2019–20 federal Budget, a further $1 billion extended the operation of the Tax Avoidance Taskforce to 2022–23. The extra funding will continue to expand our risk, assurance, and compliance strategies. It will also increase our coverage across multinationals, public groups, private groups, wealthy Australians, and inappropriate trust arrangements.

The taskforce has a strong focus on the Top 1,000 public and multinational businesses and the Top 500 privately owned groups. These groups are responsible for generating more than two-thirds of all corporate tax. The taskforce's tax assurance and compliance program has extended the private market which now covers all 5000 high wealth private groups that control net wealth of $50 million or more.

Results

As of June 2021, the Tax Avoidance Taskforce has helped the ATO raise $22.9 billion in tax liabilities. This revenue is used by the government to fund essential services, which may include education, health, and other community services.

Below is a breakup of total tax liabilities raised each financial year by public groups and multinationals and privately owned and wealth groups.

The taskforce helped raise the following tax liabilities from public groups and multinationals:

  • 2016–17 financial year was $4.1 billion
  • 2017–18 was $3 billion
  • 2018–19 was $2 billion
  • 2019–20 was $2.5 billion
  • 2020–21 was $3.0 billion.

The taskforce helped raise the following tax liabilities from privately owned and wealth groups (including trusts and promoters):

  • 2016–17 was $1.1 billion
  • 2017–18 was $1.8 billion
  • 2018–19 was $1.4 billion
  • 2019–20 was $1.8 billion
  • 2020–21 was $1.5 billion.

From 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2021, the taskforce has helped collect a total of $12.7 billion in cash.

Recent audit cases in the public domain include Apple, BHP, Chevron, Facebook, and Google. In some cases, tax revenues from these entities in Australia have increased up to 5 times.

See highlights from previous years:

The taskforce has also done substantial compliance work on the e-commerce and digital economy industry.

Join us

A big part of our focus over the next few years will be improving the tax performance of Australian businesses. The work of the Tax Avoidance Taskforce is a key part of this.

We are looking for the best and brightest and that’s where come you in! A career at the ATO provides challenging, interesting, and diverse opportunities for you and your career.

The work you do will be meaningful, rewarding and make a difference to the lives of Australians.

Read about the Tax and data specialist roles we have on offer.

Compliance programs

The taskforce has a focus on:

  • international risk, which focuses on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) and international restructuring to organise profit shifting
  • inappropriate arrangements that seek to extract profits or capital without the entity paying the right amount of tax
  • taxpayers contributing to tax gaps in markets and influencing compliance levels
  • high risk trust arrangements beyond ordinary trust arrangements or tax planning related to genuine business or family dealings
  • detecting and disrupting those intermediaries that promote tax exploitation schemes across the tax and superannuation systems
  • tax advisers, with a focus on the management of their own tax affairs and how their guidance, consultation and advice impacts their client’s compliance.

The programs led by the Tax Avoidance Taskforce include:

Engagement and assurance

The taskforce is a specialised team that includes experts with tax, legal and accounting backgrounds. Our ‘Tax Performance Programs’ provide specialist tax performance teams who engage with clients.

We work closely with the largest companies to ensure they pay the right amount of tax. We engage with them early and help them to ensure they are meeting their obligations.

These programs aim to:

  • support willing participation, focusing on prevention rather than correction
  • help taxpayers get things right
  • decide on and deal with non-compliance.

We regularly update the community on what we are seeing, including detailed finding reports for:

We also engage clients affected by new legislation from the earliest possible point. We will help them understand the new legislation and support them to meet their new or changed obligations.

The taskforce is committed to transparency about how we assess risk and administer the system. Along with the transparency and accountability obligations required by Australian law, we implemented the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's BEPS transparency initiatives.

To report any known or suspected illegal behaviour you can either:

  • complete the tip-off form (also available in the ‘Contact us’ section of the ATO app)
  • phone our tip-off hotline on 1800 060 062.

Legislation

The taskforce implements legislation to ensure businesses pay the right amount of tax in Australia:

Media releases

2023 media releases:

QC52477