ATO signals ‘push’ tax returns
As many as 1.4 million Australians may receive a so-called "push" tax return from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) next year as it moves to simplify the processes for those with relatively straight-forward tax affairs.
The move to the "push" returns has been signaled by ATO second commissioner, Neil Olesen, who told a recent CPA Congress in Canberra that the tax office was looking to reduce or even eliminate the burden for compliant individuals with simple tax affairs.
"The ATO has substantial amounts of information about taxpayers, and for those with simple returns we estimate that on current policy settings we could initially offer a ‘push' tax return for as many as 1.4 million people, and in fact are aiming to do so next year (2014)," he said.
Olesen said a prototype had been developed for the new offerings and was "looking pretty good, down to around 10 screens only from the current 140 screens in e-tax, with greatly improved navigation, and taking about 20-25 minutes to complete in our initial user testing".
He said the key principle was to use the information the ATO already routinely received about taxpayers affairs (for example, salary and wage income, bank interest, shares and dividends) to send the tax return to the taxpayer, rather than the current way where all the tax office offered was a pre-fill service while still requiring the taxpayer to prepare and lodge a return each year.
Olesen said Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and Norway send nearly three quarters of tax returns to the taxpayer, and in Norway since 2008 there had been "silent acceptance — if you do not respond within a certain period the tax return is treated as final".
"In Australia there are some reasons why we could not offer this service widely (eg, some complex deductions) but over time and with some careful and creative thinking we think we could effectively liberate around 4.5 million taxpayers from any significant response burden at tax time," he said.
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