Notifying the public
We notify the public of our intention to collect the additional 2023–24 to 2025–26 Services Australia specified benefits and entitlements data by:
- publishing a notice in the Federal Register of LegislationExternal Link gazette in the week starting 17 June 2024
- publishing this data-matching program protocol on our website at ato.gov.au/dmprotocols
- advising the data providers that they:
- can notify their clients of their participation in this program (the Services Australia privacy policyExternal Link on their website includes details that personal information is disclosed to ATO for data-matching purposes)
Gazette notice content
The following information about the data-matching program appears as a gazette notice in the Federal Register of Legislation.
Gazette notice: Commissioner of Taxation – Notice of the Services Australia specified benefits and entitlements data-matching program, 17 June 2024
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will acquire Medicare Exemption Statement (MES) data from Services Australia for 2024 financial year through to 2026 financial year inclusively. The data items include:
- Full name, date of birth, residential address
- Entitlement status, and approved entitlement period details.
We estimate that records relating to approximately 180,000 individuals will be obtained each financial year.
The objectives of this program are to:
- ensure individuals are correctly claiming exemption from payment of the Medicare levy and Medicare levy surcharge
- work with taxpayers and intermediaries to better understand the identified risks and trends for non-compliance
- develop education strategies so compliance is better understood and easier in the future
- speed up processing of tax returns and payment of refunds to taxpayers who are genuinely entitled to claim these exemptions
- undertake verification activities where the information obtained indicates a taxpayer may not be entitled to claim the exemption, either partly or in its entirety
- help ensure that individuals and businesses are fulfilling their tax and super registration, lodgment, reporting and payment obligations
- promote voluntary compliance by communicating how we use external data with our own, to help encourage taxpayers to comply with their tax and super obligations.
A document describing this program is available at ato.gov.au/dmprotocols.
This program follows the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guidelines on data matching in Australian Government administration (2014) (the guidelines). The guidelines include standards for the use of data matching as an administrative tool in a way that:
- complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act)
- is consistent with good privacy practice.
A full copy of the ATO’s privacy policy can be accessed at ato.gov.au/privacy.
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