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As your business accountant honesty is the only policy

Catch some sleep from your small business accountant surry hills 

If you have ever thought of trying to add a few extra deductions or accidentally forgetting to include certain income when lodging your income tax return, then don't! Apart from the obvious fact of the illegalities, recent press releases from the Australian Taxation Office have highlighted that for 30 June 2011 income tax returns over 540,000 taxpayers received letters querying their claims for deductions or omitted income. In following up on these queries the ATO was then able to raise a staggering $915 million dollars in extra Government revenue. In 90% of the cases where the ATO suspected something to be incorrect, they had a case. Most of these issues are now picked up via data matching whereby the ATO has access to over 600 million transactions from a variety of bodies including banks, Government agencies, share registries and even state based motor registries.

So the lesson is quite clear, the days of being able to sneak one past the ‘keeper when lodging your income tax return are long gone.

As small business accountants the most important advice we can give you is to be clear, honest and upfront when dealing with the ATO and you'll be able to sleep easy at night knowing that all their data matching powers are only going to show you up as an honest law abiding taxpayer.

 
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