Over the past year, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has commenced crackdowns against multinational tax avoidance, negative gearing deductions, and dodgy workplace uniform deductions.
Now, the ATO will crack down on unscrupulous tax agents who assist wage earners to make fraudulent work-related tax deductions, with teachers, nurses and police officers in the firing line. From The Australian:
Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan says wage earners are overstating their work tax deductions by billions of dollars and 900 “random audits” over the past two years revealed tax agents are at the root of the problem…
Mr Jordan said the extent of the over-claimed deductions was now several times larger than that of big companies. “(In some cases) they just make it up,” he said. “There is a lot more tax gap from wage and salary earners than there is in the large corporate sector, (where the tax gap) was $2.5 billion. It’s a multiple of that.
“They’ve got no receipts, no evidence of spending it, (and) their employer says to us, ‘They don’t need anything. We provide everything’.”
In the past five years, individuals’ tax deductions have blown out 20 per cent to $21bn…
Asked about the type of tax agents he was looking at, he replied: “People (who) specialise in nurses, in police, in teachers.”
Many tax returns were gilding the lily on expenses they claim. “Special clothing that is not required,” he said. “Educational courses that they either didn’t do or are not relevant.Items of equipment that an employer provided, and they just make it up.
“Someone works from home at night, so they want to claim part of their house, want to claim part of their mortgage, depreciate the carpet and their desk, and a part of their electricity.”
I’m now waiting for Scott Morrison to claim these are just “ordinary mums and dads” trying to get ahead.
