Overview
We continued to see impressive results during the second year of the Tax Avoidance Taskforce in 2017–18. The taskforce funding has increased our capability and focus on helping to protect the integrity of Australia's tax system by ensuring that money earned here is also taxed here.
Work being carried out includes not just direct compliance activity but also significant effort to understand and review the tax positions of big businesses and wealthy individuals. This work helps us to ensure that organisations and individuals are not only paying tax they may not have been previously, but also provides assurance that many others are doing the right thing.
Highlights for 2017–18
Highlights of the Tax Avoidance Taskforce work in 2017–18 include:
- Nearly $3 billion in liabilities raised against large public groups and multinational corporations and $1.8 billion in liabilities raised against wealthy individuals and private groups, with the assistance of the taskforce.
- 68 audits covering 63 multinational corporations in progress.
- 700 audits for wealthy individuals and associated groups in progress.
- 44 taxpayers brought or bringing their Australian sourced sales back onshore in response to the multinational anti avoidance legislation (MAAL). As a result, we expect the additional income returned to the Australian tax base to rise to $7 billion per annum.
- We engaged with over 245 large businesses with combined revenue of approximately $205 billion through our assurance work as part of the Top 1,000 Tax Performance Program.
- We provided assurance for 94 private groups on tax payable in excess of $1.5 billion as part of the Top 320 private groups tax performance program.
- With the diverted profits tax (DTP) coming into effect 1 July 2017, we began reviewing our existing audits and advanced pricing arrangements to check taxpayers within scope.