On Thursday 19 March the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) released their program blueprint “Reinventing the ATO”. The ATO stated that the blueprint describes the kind of experience that Australians expect to have when they deal with the ATO and that it will guide everything that the ATO does in the coming years.

The ATO state that the blueprint has been in development for close to 12 months and has had input from thousands of different people involved in different market segments, members of the accounting and legal professions, other agencies and ATO staff.

The Commissioner of Taxation, Chris Jordan, announced that he was seeking to “embed a culture in the ATO that is service-oriented, pragmatic, and conscious that time has a cost.”

Privately-owned groups and wealthy individuals

As part of the program blueprint, the ATO stated that from late April it will make available a new online resource dedicated to privately-owned groups and wealthy individuals.

The ATO will engage in personal conversations with the largest taxpayers in the segment (more than $1 billion turnover or $500 million in assets) and their advisors. It will also provide a report to other taxpayers in this segment whose activities have attracted the ATO’s attention outlining their risk assessment and concerns.

Those privately-owned groups and wealthy individual taxpayers with a low level of risk (as assessed by the ATO) will be told that their income tax affairs for previous years lodged to date will NOT be subject to further review. The ATO have said that about 30,000 privately-owned groups and wealthy individuals fall into this category.

For further information, please contact:

Daniel Smedley
Principal
Sladen Legal
+61 411 319 327 | +61 3 9611 0105
dsmedley@sladen.com.au