The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has reported a record number of pre-filled and corrected tax returns this year which it attributes to the use of analytics and data-matching technology.
Assistant Taxation Commissioner Kath Anderson said that in the first two months of tax time more than $11.9 billion had been refunded to taxpayers and more than $53 million in errors had been detected and corrected before the refunds were issued.
“We want to make it easy for taxpayers and agents to get it right, and have already pre-filled over 80 million pieces of data from, banks, employers, health funds and Government Agencies,” Ms Anderson said.
“Unfortunately some people are still getting it wrong.”
She said the ATO’s use of advanced analytics was allowing it to closely scrutinise more returns than ever before, and make immediate adjustments where taxpayers had made a mistake.
“In the first half of tax time, the ATO’s analytics and compliance models automatically adjusted more than 112,000 tax returns to correct mistakes in returns,” Ms Anderson said.
“We have processed a record number of tax returns so far this tax time, with just under 5.8 million returns lodged in July and August.”
She said most of the income adjustments were for simple mistakes, like leaving out bank interest or salary and wages.
“For some, it seems their priority was on generating a refund rather than getting it right, as they have deliberately ignored the pre-fill information that was available at the time of lodgement,” Ms Anderson said.
“The ATO’s data matching activities help ensure a level playing field for all, protecting honest taxpayers by detecting those who have not done the right thing,” she said.
