Budget heralds new approach to chasing tax revenue

Pointing to the $340 million tax bill case win for the ATO, Marcus Leonard, tax partner at BDO, said that there was a clear target in Treasurer Scott Morrison’s budget speech aimed at amended assessments as a source of additional revenue raising.

“It’s the first time in a few years that they’ve actually increased the budget allocation in the tax office,” said Mr Leonard.

“It’s usually been decreased or doesn’t get a mention and it’s the first time I’ve heard it mentioned in a treasurer’s speech.

“I’ve got the impression that if they focus on all these new integrity measures being introduced and apply them, then that will be quite a large number of taxes generated in revenue and when you’re talking $4.9 billion, then you sit back and go, ‘well you don’t actually need to charge a tax rate to get such a big influx of tax revenue’.”

In his budget speech, Mr Morrison noted that the ATO had already raised “$2.9 billion in tax liabilities this year against a group of just seven large multinational companies”.

Mr Leonard believes the integrity measures are a tidying up of current provisions.

“They’ve introduced previously the measures that attack certain types of tax structures and now they’ve applied those measures to large multinationals and that has resulted in a change in their tax position and the tax office is amending their assessments accordingly,” said Mr Leonard.

“The main measures they are looking at are probably around transfer pricing, particularly they are looking at related party transactions and pricing between Australia and international-related parties or part of a group.”