The Australian Tax Office has obtained data from eBay Australia and Trading Post Australia to assess the level of taxation compliance of individuals and businesses that sell goods or services online.
The data identifies members of online selling sites who are involved in selling goods and services of a total value greater than $20,000 in any of the past three financial years – 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10.
They will use this data to improve compliance with tax obligations of particular groups of taxpayers. This allows to:
- identify individuals and businesses that don’t report or under report their sales
- identify individuals and businesses that operate ‘off the books’ and avoid their obligations by not registering, lodging returns or making payments
- better understand and address the compliance behaviour of taxpayers involved in online selling
- increase community awareness of the ways we use data matching to address tax compliance
- protect honest taxpayers, by deterring, detecting and dealing with those who have not complied.
They will contact individuals and businesses that are identified as at risk of running part of their business off the books or in other ways not reporting all their income. The ATO will encourage them to make a voluntary disclosure of any under reported amounts.
Where appropriate the data will be used to support default assessments of a businesses’ tax liabilities.
Matching data
This data is electronically matched with the ATO data to identify individuals and businesses who are:
- participating in the cash economy
- non-compliant with registration requirements
- not reporting or under reporting sales
- not meeting their lodgment and payment obligations under tax law.
