The Tax Office has announced that it is working with insurance providers to identify Australians with policies covering an expanded range of asset classes.
Coming under its net are insurance policies that include cover for damage or loss related to marine, aviation, enthusiast motor vehicles, fine art and thoroughbred horses.
The Tax Office says it uses data matching to identify the wealthy lurking among us, and that this information will be used by it to get a more accurate estimate of the true wealth of individual taxpayers.
Starting mid January and extending into February, the Tax Office says it has issued and will issue formal notices to insurers to provide it with these policy details. Communications have also been published for tax professionals notifying them of its intentions regarding matching data to insurance records.
It says it expects to receive around 100,000 records where the different asset classes meet certain threshold amounts.
Sam Campisi is a director of Collins House Private Wealth, which provides services and advice to a fair number of high net wealth individuals (HNWIs). He says these data matching efforts by the Tax Office are inevitable.
“It’s no real surprise that the ATO would use a wide range of strategies such as these to ensure everyone, especially high wealth individuals, pay the correct tax,” Campisi says. “This is the ATO’s job, to ensure all taxpayers contribute fairly and legally and will not hesitate to prosecute should they detect fraud or non-tax compliance.”