Recent Federal Court decisions relating to the tax and superannuation treatment of specific invalidity benefit payments under some military superannuation schemes has identified the need by the Australia Taxation Office (ATO) for data from the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation to support taxpayers in remediating their affairs as a result of this ruling.
Normally, to remediate these matters we would require taxpayers to provide supporting information. For this issue, this would likely result in each impacted taxpayer contacting their superannuation fund for supporting documentation to provide to the ATO.
To remove this burden, we are implementing a streamlined approach where we will collect the required information from the superannuation fund directly. This will minimise the effort required by taxpayers seeking to have their matters remediated. It will also minimise the overall administrative burden on the superannuation fund.
Our data-matching programs follow the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s (OAIC) Guidelines on data matching in Australian Government administration (2014). The guidelines assist Australian Government agencies to use data-matching as an administrative tool in a way that complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) and are consistent with good privacy practice.
The ATO has responsibility to protect public revenue and maintain community confidence in the integrity of the tax system.
Our data-matching programs help us to undertake these responsibilities.