The tax office released a news piece today about their intentions of hunting down property developers who might be avoiding their tax obligations.
They’re concerned that not only are some developers not paying the income tax on their profits from selling land and newly-constructed buildings, some are also not declaring and paying the appropriate GST either. To counter what the tax office clearly sees as a pretty big problem – they hit one developer with a $4.5M penalty – they will be using data matching to analyse property sales from the various state revenue offices and comparing those to both lodged and incomplete tax returns and activity statements.
As we’ve often said before, the ability that the tax office has to gather information is almost bordering on Orwellian, and it’s simply not worth the risk to try hiding from them. If you think that you might be in trouble, please chat to us asap as it will always work out better if you ‘fess up before they start asking awkward questions.
And if you’re interested; the full article published by the tax office can be found here.