ATO exposes dodgy deductions

With over eight million Australians claiming work-related expenses each year, the ATO is reminding people to make sure they get their deductions right this tax time.

Assistant Commissioner Graham Whyte said that, in 2014/15, the ATO conducted around 450,000 reviews and audits of individual taxpayers, leading to revenue adjustments of over $1.1 billion in income tax.

“Every tax return is scrutinised using increasingly sophisticated tools and data analytics developed (by) the ATO.  This means we can identify and review income tax returns that may omit information or contain unreasonable deductions,” Mr Whyte said.

The ATO also set out some case studies, which provide a fascinating insight into the ATO’s methods, including:

• A medical professional who made a claim for attending a conference in America, and provided an invoice for the expense, but when the ATO checked, it found that the taxpayer was still in Australia at the time of the conference (the claims were disallowed and the taxpayer received a substantial penalty); and
• A taxpayer who claimed deductions for car expenses, but the ATO found they had recorded kilometres in their log book on days where there was no record of the car travelling on the toll roads, and further inquiries identified that the taxpayer was out of the country.  Their claims were also disallowed.