Commissioner’s speech highlights ATO’s focus areas

Recently, the Commissioner of Taxation highlighted the areas in which the ATO has recently increased its focus, including:

• undeclared income;
• individuals’ unexplained wealth or lifestyle;
• incorrectly claimed private expenses;
• unpaid superannuation guarantee; and
• cash-only businesses and those with low usage of merchant banking facilities, with black economy visits to over 2,600 businesses across 8 locations in 2017.

The Commissioner also highlighted ongoing ATO concern with respect to the predicted ‘work-related expense claim gap’, which (at least by the ATO’s estimates) could amount to being greater than the ‘large corporate tax gap’ of $2.5 billion of lost revenue.