Rob Heferen, Commissioner of Taxation
Corporate plan 2025–26 launch
Canberra, 11 August 2025
(Check against delivery)
Thanks Bec, and thank you Aunty Violet for your very generous Welcome for us to walk on your Country. And I acknowledge you and other Elders past and present.
Welcome everyone to the launch of our 2025–26 corporate plan.
I’d like to thank the Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Dr Daniel Mulino for his kind words, acknowledging the importance of our work and our priorities for this year.
I noted the Assistant Treasurer mentioned that he thoroughly enjoyed his visit to the Docklands office, including the baked goods! I look forward to him being able to meet more of our people over the coming years.
As the Minister emphasised, the work we do is vital to a well-functioning society. In collecting tax and ensuring all obligations are met, we help governments fund the roads we drive on, the hospitals in which we receive care and the schools in which our children are educated.
This is something I’m proud to be a part of, and I hope all of you are as well.
He also used a few specific words that I think bear repeating:
- fairness
- integrity
- professionalism.
These are the qualities I see every day, in so many of our actions. They are what most clearly comes to mind when I think of our people and our culture.
Never more so, than when we come together to work as a team for the Australian community.
Why this matters
Our corporate plan is our primary planning document, but it’s so much more that.
It outlines how we’ll meet our commitments to government, and the expectation of the community, in the coming year.
Its launch brings us together. It puts us in the same room, it gets us focused on the same things – it’s one of those moments that matter and it sets us up to keep the main thing, the main thing.
Our recent capability reviewExternal Link highlighted some opportunities for improvement. It's off a high base. The corporate plan launch is the perfect place to do this.
I hope those watching in our sites around the country enjoy the panel discussion and enjoy the opportunity to connect with colleagues and focus on what matters for the year ahead.
Our purpose and vision
Our corporate plan outlines our key focus areas, enterprise priorities and essential organisational capabilities for 2025–26.
These are all designed with our refreshed purpose and vision front of mind.
Through today’s discussion and when you read the plan, you’ll note that it reflects the broad and complex nature of our work, but holds to our clear, core purpose: collecting tax so that government can deliver services for the Australian community.
Combined with our performance evolution – or how we’re responding to the capability review – the plan also outlines what we need to do to continue moving towards our vision: an Australia where every taxpayer meets their obligations because:
- complying is easy
- help is tailored
- deliberate non-compliance has consequences.
Simply put, our primary focus as the nation’s principal tax collector is ensuring that all taxpayers, both large and small, meet their obligations. This is very much what the government and community expects of us, and so it’s appropriate that its where we keep our focus.
We are a strong agency, with a tough job, and we do it with empathy, resilience and deep expertise.
As a large government agency with extensive powers, we will be subject to heightened scrutiny. I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll reiterate – we should welcome that scrutiny no matter it’s source, and always seek out the opportunities that scrutiny unearths for improvement.
But we need to make sure that in responding to public criticism we only make those changes that are needed. Not all criticism of us is warranted.
We do a lot well, but we can always be better and should always be trying to do better. In the words of the great Stan Lee, 'with great power, comes great responsibility'.
Our refreshed purpose and vision help with this, by sharpening our focus on what matters most. Our corporate plan then provides a roadmap for delivery.
Regardless of role or level, we all have a shared responsibility to take our organisation forward. This is stewardshipExternal Link, the Australian Public Service value that requires we work with one eye on the future and leave things better than we found them.
In this spirit, I encourage you to read the plan, discuss it with your teams, colleagues in your site, managers, and leaders, and come together to do work that has a lasting impact.
It is through these discussions you will be able to see how your work, team and branch can bring our purpose and vision to life, and how you directly serve government and the community.
2025–26 plan
To realise our vision, this year we will focus on 5 priority areas.
We will strengthen payment performance and debt collection to foster on-time payment behaviour, improve compliance and help prevent future debt.
Our enhanced counter fraud measures will be re-focused on identifying and preventing fraud in the first instance, with direct consequences for taxpayers repeatedly or deliberately avoiding their tax or super guarantee obligations.
We will help strengthen a fairer and more efficient superannuation system for businesses and individuals through establishing Payday Super (subject to passage of legislation of course).
The delivery of a digitalised tax experience for small business will streamline and simplify tax operations to better position small business to both meet their obligations and save time in doing so.
Finally, we will implement our response to the Australian Public Service Commission’s Capability Review of the ATO. This will strengthen our ability to respond to our dynamic operating environment and meet future challenges as we deliver a positive workplace culture, improved job satisfaction and increased productivity and efficiency.
Vulnerability capability
Another piece of work I want to call out – which isn’t one of our enterprise priorities but it is highly important – is our Vulnerability Framework.
As part of delivering on our priorities, we must continue to recognise vulnerability comes in many forms and individuals may face it at any point in their lives. It can be temporary, long term or permanent, but it’s almost always complex, dynamic and unique to each person.
While we can’t remove a taxpayer’s obligations or change the taxation outcome under the law, we can listen to their circumstances and better support people to meet their obligations.
Our Vulnerability Framework will help us to do this.
As we implement it, we’ll continue to balance decisions on how to best support people experiencing vulnerability with our other commitments, including our duty to maintain the integrity of the tax system.
Closing
As the Accountable Authority for the ATO, the Tax Practitioners BoardExternal Link and the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits CommissionExternal Link, including the ACNC Advisory BoardExternal Link, I have valued working with Peter de Cure and Sue Woodward over the last 12 months to deliver on our collective responsibilities and I look forward to working together over the year ahead.
Lastly, I’d like to thank you all. You are the people who show up each day and make it all possible.
Collecting tax on behalf of the government isn’t an easy job but it’s an important one and I’m honoured to lead an organisation with employees dedicated to delivering for the Australian community.
From our eyes and ears on the front line, to our processing and enabling teams across all corporate and technology functions, to our sharp legal minds and diligent compliance officers – our success is reliant on each and every one of you.
Thank you.