Australians dobbing in tax evaders

The Commissioner for Taxation, Michael D’Ascenzo, has revealed the extent of the latest crackdown on the cash economy, including that Australians are increasingly willing to dob in tax evaders.

He said that the Australian Taxation Office now had around 470 officers working directly on the cash economy and that over the past three years those officers had written to, telephoned or visited more than 140,000 taxpayers as part of its efforts to curb the cash economy.

“To the end of May this year, the ATO has conducted close to 2,000 audits directly as a result of our focus on the cash economy,” he told a Sydney conference.

“This activity has raised nearly $50 million in taxation liabilities and a number of unreported cash transaction cases have been referred for prosecution action.”

D’Ascenzo said that over the previous two financial years the ATO’s activities had established more than $238 million in total liabilities.

“Our efforts have also produced improvements in amounts of tax reported and lodgement timeliness for those businesses that we have contacted over possible cash economy activity,” he said.

“Early results indicate that there is a reduction in the community’s tolerance of people and businesses not declaring cash income. This can be seen in a significant increase in information received through our tax evasion hotline.”