ATO targets high net worths
Financial planners with high-net-worth clients will need to ensure they are aware of the new priorities outlined in the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO’s) compliance program.
Discussing the new compliance program, the Taxation Commissioner, Michael D’Ascenzo, said more individuals now fitted into the wealth category, defined by the ATO as those controlling assets of $30 million or more.
He said the number of people defined as wealthy in Australia now exceeded 1,200.
D’Ascenzo said the new strategy for 2007-08 was to release a booklet for high wealth individuals setting out what attracts attention, what the ATO considered to be a risk and details of the ATO’s information collection and compliance processes.
He said the ATO was working with representatives of wealthy individuals on the initiative.
D’Ascenzo said enhanced data matching would substantially improve the ATO’s profiling and risk assessment of wealth individuals.
“We have developed new automated ways of using and accessing third party information on large financial transactions and capital holdings, together with a tool that maps relationships in data and helps identify collected individuals, entities and transactions,” he said.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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