The ATO is going through a “significant downsizing process” and cutting 3,000 jobs by the end of October, Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) deputy president Alistair Waters told SMSF Adviser.
Mr Waters agreed staff cuts could potentially have a negative impact on monitoring and compliance of the SMSF sector.
“We’re also concerned that we’ll be looking at staff… being asked to carry out functions they just don’t have the skills or capacity to carry out,” he said.
“We don’t see how the 3,000 jobs across the tax office can’t have a negative impact on tax revenue,” he added.
The CPSU fears the staff cuts will make it easier for “high-end tax cheats to get away with things”.
“Pulling 3,000 jobs out of the tax office by October is huge, particularly given that at the moment, according to the Budget, it’s to be followed up with a further 1,700 job cuts. That has to impact the ATO’s capacity to ensure compliance,” he said.
“Australia’s tax system relies on the community considering that it’s a fair system. So being able to carry out those compliance and enforcement functions effectively and being seen to do that is really important.”
Commenting on SMSF’s are core union business huh?
Campbell makes a good point. The ATO reports that the incidence of auditor-qualified accounts from SMSFs is low (2%) compared with the incidence for the general taxpaying population (15%). In terms of tax compliance, SMSFs are low risk for the ATO because generally trustees take their compliance responsibilities seriously. John makes a good point too. Not sure if the ATO is equipped to do what he suggests but there are administration platform providers who provide this sort of streamlined service for SMSFs.
Duncan Fairweather, SMSF Owners’ Alliance
Can I again plead that the ATO introduce an E tax system for anyone who is prepared to confine SMSF assets to the equivalent of Comsec Chessed shares & Bank accounts. As well as eliminating what must be a phenominal ATO workload, checking tax returns it would save the tedious job of many thousands of SMSF holders submitting returns. The ATO’s computers would just have to send out a statement, invoice or cheque each year. The Auditor would just have to vouch there were no other assets.
Given SMSFs systematically are reviewed as having a high level of compliance, while newspapers regularly have reports of corruption, maybe removing resources from monitoring SMSFs and adding resources monitoring corruption would be a good idea.
Maybe resources should be added to ASIC who could harass the steady stream of people with vested interests who seem to be able to link any story as meaning SMSFs are bad.