Australian Taxation Office has pulled its socks up to start auditing people who have migrated to Australia, migration agents who help migrants acting as intermediaries and VISA holders in an attempt to see the following of the compliance. The humungous task will be done over a period of three years and ATO has said that it will obtain records of more than 20 million individuals.
The exercise is being conducted hoping that it will help in finding out whether taxes are being paid or not by people falling into the category and will also help in reinforcing superannuation requirements. The audit will also aim at migration agents to find out potential fraudsters.
During the audit, details of individuals like address details of VISA holder, stay period, travel history, details about their economic stability and their sponsors if any, details of education provider in case of student visa will be obtained. The audit will also aim at giving superannuation benefits to the eligible people and hence eligible migrants who have left the country can hope to get these amount now.
ATO talked about the step taken and said that it will acquire visa information for visas granted in the period 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2020. The records that will be obtained shall be electronically matched with ATO data to find out cases of noncompliance with obligations under taxation and superannuation laws. Talking about the reason behind the decision, “The objectives of this data matching program are to maintain currency of our knowledge of taxation and superannuation risks within the visa holders, visa sponsors and migration agent’s populations (and) test the accuracy and strengths of our existing risk detection models … and identify areas for improvement in our models, treatment systems, and practices.”
