The Australian Taxation Office has released their 2017/18 ATO Fraud and Corruption Control Plan. This plan sets out the details of how the ATO is taking proactive measures designed to help reduce fraud, what measures they are using to uncover incidences of fraud and how the ATO will respond to fraud with default assessments, recovery actions and criminal prosecutions.
Tax fraud is simply making a false representation to the Commissioner of Taxation. This is based on evidence that the person made this representation knowing it was false or with such a degree of indifference or lack of concern about its correctness that it can be concluded that no real belief was held in the truth. SMEs need to be aware of tax fraud and the consequences for simple mistakes and omissions to declare all income they should, claiming a deduction they are not entitled to, or failing to remit PAYGW and or superannuation guarantee.
The consequences of tax fraud vary and can be extremely punishing and range from simple penalties, criminal convictions, fines and prison sentences. If penalties are applied for an individual, the monetary penalty can be up to $900,000 and for a company, $4,500,000.
A recent case handed down in the NSW Supreme Court resolved around the creation of false losses overseas to evade corporate tax in Australia.
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