How we use sharing economy accommodation data
The data acquired will be used initially to identify and inform people who rent out all or a part of their property about their taxation obligations as part of an information and education campaign.
Compliance action may be initiated based on the data acquired.
Previous related programs
No previous data-matching activities have been conducted on the sharing economy – accommodation market sector.
Other sharing economy data-matching protocols have been published in 2015 and 2017 for the ride sourcing industry.
The data sets requested under this program protocol will also include data from sharing economy platforms and/or the financial institutions they use.
Data providers
We are the matching agency and, in most cases the sole user of the data obtained during this data-matching program.
The source entities for this data-matching program include sharing economy – accommodation platforms from whom payments to individuals who rent out short term accommodation are made and the financial institutions used by sharing economy platform providers through which payments are directed to platform users.
Eligibility as a data provider
We adopt a principles-based approach to ensure that our selection of data providers is fair and transparent.
Inclusion of a sharing economy platform as a data provider in the program is based on the following principles:
- the data owner or its subsidiary operates a business in Australia that is governed by Australian law
- the data owner provides a platform for short term rental accommodation services
- the data owner provided these facilities in the year(s) in focus
- where the client base of a data owner does not present an omitted income risk or the administrative or financial cost of collecting the data exceeds the benefit the data may provide, the data owner may be excluded from the program.
The data providers for this program will be reviewed periodically against the eligibility criteria and, if required, will be included in the data-matching program.
Our formal information gathering powers
To ensure statutory requirements are met, we obtain data under our formal information gathering powers. These are contained in section 353-10 of Schedule 1 to the Taxation Administration Act 1953.
This is a coercive power, and data providers are obligated to provide the information requested.
We will use the data for tax and super compliance purposes.
Privacy Act
Data will only be used within the limits prescribed by Australian Privacy Principle 6 (APP6) contained in Schedule 1 of the Privacy Act and in particular:
- APP6.2(b) – the use of the information is required or authorised by an Australian law
- APP6.2(e) – the ATO reasonably believes that the use of the information is reasonably necessary for our enforcement-related activities.
Data elements we collect
We negotiate with the selected data providers individually to obtain data held within their systems. The collected data may contain all or a selection of the fields listed for the 2016–17 to 2019–20 financial years.
From online platforms
- Listing owner and property details:
- name
- contact details (postal address and telephone numbers)
- date of birth
- rental property address
- listing ID
- owner or listing manager
- room or whole house listing.
- Financial transactions per listing:
- banking details
- payment method
- gross rental income
- fees or commissions withheld
- nights booked.
- Property activities:
- listing date
- enquiry rates and responses
- conversion rate (bookings/enquiries)
- cancellations initiated by guests and host
- host or owner block outs dates
- price per night
- minimum night booking
- type of booking allowed: instant or contact
- changes to the listing details such as price change or condition change
From financial institutions that the platform providers bank with
- Payee details:
- payee account name
- payee BSB
- payee account number
- date of payment to the payee
- amount of payment to the payee.
Number of records
The number of individuals affected by this data collection is expected to exceed 190,000 over the time period of the program.
Data retention
The collection of data under this program protocol is expected to occur periodically throughout the period July 2018 to July 2020.
We sought to have the Privacy Commissioner exercise their discretion and allow the ATO to vary from the data destruction requirements contained in the Guidelines.
We were granted to retain each financial year’s data for 5 years from the receipt of the last instalment of data on the basis that its retention is required for the protection of public revenue. Data was managed and destroyed in accordance with the requirements of the Guidelines and the National Archives of Australia's General Disposal Authority 24 (GDA24) - Records relating to Data Matching Exercises. GDA24 has been revoked as such further exemption requests are not required.
Destroying the data earlier than the requested timeframe would hinder the ATO’s ability to protect public revenue because:
- Individuals identified as not meeting their taxation obligations, including being partly or wholly outside the taxation system, may have been operating that way for multiple years. A retention period of 5 years will enable the ATO to cross reference taxpayer records retrospectively.
- The nature of the discrepancy matching that occurs under this program will be, in some instance, iterative. This includes the data being used to generate lodgment reviews with subsequent lodgments then being compared to the transactional data for accuracy. This process can occur over multiple years.
- It would hinder the ATO’s ability to conduct long term trend analysis and risk profiling of the sharing economy - accommodation market.
See the Variation to the Guidelines setting out the basis for seeking the variation to the data destruction guidelines and its impacts on individual privacy.
The sharing economy accommodation data-matching program has transitioned to the Sharing economy reporting regime (SERR) which commenced from 1 July 2023. To support the transition to this new reporting arrangement, we will retain each financial year's data acquired from this data-matching program for an additional 3 years.
Retaining the data for an additional 3 years will:
- support the transition to SERR since data providers may need to update their data fields and systems to meet the reporting requirements of SERR which may take a significant amount of time to complete
- assist the training of rental property models used for understanding client demographics until enough data is received through SERR
- support research in improving the process to legislate data collection.
The data retained from this data-matching program will not be used for compliance.