The ATO has announced that it will continue to acquire details of entities that receive contractor payments from other businesses for the 2013/14, 201415 and 2015/16 financial years.

The data they will be collecting includes:

• ABN of the paying business;
• ABN of the contractor;
• Name of the contractor;
• Address of the contractor;
• Contact information for the contractor;
• Dates of the payments made to the contractor; and
• The amounts paid to the contractor, including details such as the GST paid.

The ATO have estimated that records of up to 25,000 entities will be obtained for each of the above years, with records of approximately 12,500 individuals included in this.

The purpose of this contractor data matching program is to ensure that taxpayers are correctly meeting their tax obligations in relations to contracting payments. The records will be matched electronically with sections of ATO data holdings in order to identify non-compliance in areas such as:

• Registration;
• Lodgement;
• Reporting; and
• Payment obligations under tax laws.

Ref: Commonwealth Gazette – Contractor payments data matching program

This article is provided as general information only and does not consider your specific situation, objectives or needs. It does not represent accounting advice upon which any person may act. Implementation and suitability requires a detailed analysis of your specific circumstances.