Talking Cents

Offering more than accounting services in Surry Hills

As a small business accountant in Surry Hills and the work I do on an everyday basis, a number of my past blogs this year have been in relation to ATO data matching and with good reason. The fact that so much of our lives is now recorded electronically or online provides the ATO with some massive opportunities to conduct reviews of potential audit targets. This gives the ATO a huge head start on who to audit and no doubt allows them to have a much higher success rate in catching out tax cheats. With our many years of experience as small business accountants and being apart of ipa accountants here is a quick summary of the who, how and why of what the ATO is targeting we can let you in on:

·Any motor vehicle transfer that was registered as being greater than $10,000.00 in value since 1 July 2011 will be looked at.

·This covers all motor registries in all States and Territories of Australia.

·The key target will be individual taxpayers who have acquired motor vehicles with high values but only report relatively low taxable income. (In essence, how can they afford to buy expensive cars if their income doesn’t support it?)

·Another target is Individuals/businesses that buy and sell vehicles but don't report them as taxable income, for both GST and income tax purposes.

·By investigating this issue, it will then open a window for the ATO to delve deeper into taxpayers records to seek out further anomalies in areas such as superannuation, FBT and luxury car tax. It’s often a case, of where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

As always the ATO gives the opportunity to come clean and make “voluntary disclosure” which will assist anyone who knows they have done the wrong thing in mitigating potential ATO penalties.

It’s just another reason why it is so critical to keep completely accurate records for your business (and your home life as well) and to keep an open and honest relationship with your accountant as one of the core segments of your business operations.

Do not hesitate to contact us, your tax accountant in Surry Hills if you have any queries on the particular important topic.