It's hard to hide a boat and even harder to hide a house.
Much more achievable, however, is hiding some art on your wall or a
horse in a stable, and the ATO knows it.
The ATO have long been using data analytics to catch out
taxpayers on their undisclosed income. Most recently, the ATO has
found that some of the biggest undisclosed financial activities of
the wealthy are asset transactions subject to capital gains
tax.
The ATO has now begun to use data analytics so that they can
discover when a wealthy individual has disposed of a valuable asset
that would be subject to tax. A little-known power of the ATO
allows them to obtain data from insurance agencies, helping them to
more accurately estimate wealth, target their investigations and
bring undisclosed lifestyle assets into the taxation system. A
previous ATO initiative relating to offshore assets, Project Do It,
resulted in over $5 billion in assets declared to 30 June last
year, with much more expected.
