The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is preparing to embark on an unprecedented data matching program, today asking state authorities for extensive records relating to real property from the period of 20th September 1985 to 30 June 2017.
In a notice published today in the Government Gazette, the ATO indicates “The purpose of this data matching program is to ensure that taxpayers are correctly meeting taxation and other program obligations administered by the ATO in relation to their dealings with real property. These obligations include registration, lodgment, reporting and payment responsibilities.”
The ATO will seek the following records from Rental Bond Authorities:
Rental bond number of identifier for rental bond
Unique identifier for the landlord
Full name of the landlord
Full address of the landlord
Date of birth of the landlord
Contact telephone numbers for the landlord
Unique identifier of the managing agent
Full name of the managing agent
Full address of the managing agent
Unique identifier of the rental property
Full address of the rental property
Period of lease
Commencement and expiration of the lease
Amount of rental bond held
Number of weeks the rental bond is for
Amount of rent payable for each period
Period of rental payments (weekly, fortnightly, monthly)
Type of dwelling
Number of bedrooms
The ATO will also seek the following records from revenue and land titles authorities:
Date of property transfer
Full street address of the property transferred
Municipality identifier of the property transferred
Property sale contract date
Property sale settlement date
Property land area
Property sub-division date
Total property transfer price
Land usage code
Transferor’s full name
Transferor’s full address
Transferor’s share percentage and manner of holding
Transferor’s date of birth
Transferor’s Australian Company Number (ACN) or Australian Business Number (ABN)
Transferee’s full name
Transferee’s full address
Transferee’s property share percentage and manner of holding
Transferee’s date of birth
Transferee’s ACN or ABN
Land tax and applicable exemption details
Purchase duty and applicable exemption details
Valuation details
» ATO hunts 32yrs of foreign buyer records – Macrobusiness, 12th December 2015.
I don’t think the ATO can prosecute tax avoidance beyond 7 or so years can they. Why go back so far?
Interesting the specific 20th September 1985 date – that’s the date Capital Gains Tax (CGT) came into effect. I wonder if the government is modeling what positive contribution it can make to the budget by abolishing the 50% capital gains discount?
Too little and too late. The damage has already been done.
By asking for information on all property transactions as it looks like they are, could they be looking at a change in the way stamp duties are collected as well.
I will be in my house for a total of 50-60 years by the time I am ready to sell, all going well. It is claimed the average is 10 years between sales and moving, so only one stamp duty from me, not 5 or 6.
If they are going after tax avoidance back to that date it only requires a change in legislation to enable it. If the figure is big enough and things get bad enough in budgetary terms, then they may try.
@ Pete
As far as I’m aware, it’s 7 years AFTER DISPOSAL of the asset. If you bought 30 years ago, but still own it, or sold with in the last 7 years, you MUST have records, or be prepared to drop your strides for the ATO.
I highly doubt they’ll go as hard on this as they could.
But that said, just as proved here locally in SA by On The Run owners vs. EPA, these government authorities CAN and DO have laws that effectively mean they can do what the hell they like.
For the record, I’m all for the ATO probing these landlords. Many prepare their own tax without understanding the law eg. Build a fence and write it off as an maintenance…No, it’s a capital expense that gets depreciated….
Just like the announcement that illegally foreign owned purchases would be heavily investigated, I suspect this will die a silent whimper.
the ato can go back as long as it wants for tax avoidance…no time limit
this is being done due to budget pressures – hope it hits landlords hard who have been taking cash payments
Interesting. They will have developed an algorithm to run across the data.
May I suggest that the ATO start with our well paid politicians. If the following manage their property portfolios as well as they manage the country it should be a nice earner for them. They need to pay special attention to Canberra properties with mortgages funded from accommodation allowances.
AUSTRALIA’S TOP PROPERTY-RICH POLLIES:
1. Barry O’Sullivan QLD 42 properties
2, Clive Palmer QLD 27 properties (7 in spouse’s name)
3. Dr David Gillespie NSW 18
4. Natasha Griggs NT 12
5, Karen Andrews QLD 10
6. Ian Goodenough WA 9
7= Dan Tehan VIC 7 (6 in spouse’s name)
7= Malcolm Turnbull NSW 7 (3 spouse’s name)
8= Tony Pasin SA 6 (1 in spouse’s name)
8= Tony Zappia SA 6 (1 in spouse’s name)
8= Sean Edwards SA 6
9= Christopher Back WA 5
9= Bronwyn Bishop NSW 5
9= Glenn Lazarus QLD 5
9= Deborah O’Neill NSW 5
9= Luke Simpkins WA 5 (1 in spouse’s name)
9= Nicholas Xenophon SA 5
10= Mathias Cormann WA 4
10= Joel Fitzgibbon NSW 4
10= Joe Hockey NSW 4 (2 in spouse’s name)
10= Alannah MacTiernan WA 4
10= Shayne Neumann QLD 4 (1 in spouse’s name)
10= Rowan Ramsey SA 4
10= Philip Ruddock NSW 4
10= Warren Truss QLD 4 (1 in spouse’s name)
10= Glenn Sterle WA 4
Vino Veritas = easy to see why there will never be any meaningful reform of the economy.
Almost 5% of properties in Melbourne are vacant and belong to overseas buyers. Perhaps the ATO should be looking at measures to make owning empty houses unattractive as it artificially keeps housing prices up and damages the economy.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-08/nobody-s-home-australian-boom-leaves-swathe-of-empty-properties
Re comment #5
“the ato can go back as long as it wants for tax avoidance…no time limit”
Technically yes, but their policy of only requiring taxpayers to keep 5yrs (not 7 anymore my accountant told me) worth of records effectively quashes any attempt to go beyond that limit. The ATO would have to do their own substantiation,and they do not have the time for that, they are far too busy chasing bigger fish.
I agree its most likely being done in relation to budgetary pressures – as the economy tanks, they will try to scrape in money any way they can. But anyone who has cheated is a fool, you simply cant escape data matching now for any registered transaction.
Its only in countries like Africa where property deals are done privately with suitcases of money and private deed exchanges. A lot of Africans don’t even have bank accounts. Its the ultimate underground economy. Dem good old days.
I think the 30-year, back to 1985, is a strong indication targeting at overseas buyers.
ATO probably needs a strong software to pick up their targets from such a big database.
Also ATO probably harvest a lot from such investment and efforts.
The more interesting discussion would then be the consequences. Maybe the overseas buyers are less influential than the heavily negatively geared domestic speculators.
Unfortunately domestic speculators can still enjoy the tax benefits at this moment, even though they are the pushing hands of distorted housing market.
International buyers may just be scapegoats to cover the systematic problem within the country.
‘One of the nation’s largest banks has recorded significant increases in customers making minimum interest only repayments, shifting from 32 per cent of their customers doing this in February to an alarming 68 per cent now.’
TICK TOCK.
http://www.perthnow.com.au/business/increasing-number-of-mortgage-borrowers-making-minimum-only-repayments/news-story/3e4306a632fbd0dc3a53a7147381c633
I reckon they’ll hit the domestic speculators, but quietly. The database crunching of data is easy. They’ll either use Hadoop or some Oracle platform like exadata and just go for it.
Government won’t have purged any of their records because they have no storage budgetary pressures as they just waste more tax dollars on it.
I’d slam it on MongoDB, scale out and use regular expressions for matches and badabing, the ball would be rolling with usable results in a fortnight. Let’s start with a search on the list Vino Veritas supplied.
http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf
Interest rate rise starts in the US. Not enough to cause a sudden rush of oxygen out of Australia but with the recent collapse of clearance rates perhaps you can feel the breeze strengthening. Once the interest rate disparity narrows the breeze should become a hurricane as funds rush back to the US. Freeze on lending due to lack of capital in domestic banks to follow, then price falls due to lack of supply (of capital not houses). Over-leveraged investors forced out and enforced selling and death spiral begins. Top of the roller coaster view is quite breathtaking.
What we need to see is total confiscation of properties purchased by foreign crime syndicates and fraudsters who have stolen vast sums and are using Australia to launder illegal funds stolen from their own people. Will the ATO have the balls to take them on and return the funds to their rightful owners? I doubt it.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-16/meet-foreign-criminals-using-la-real-estate-launder-money-developers-who-help-them