Gazette notice: Commissioner of Taxation – Notice of the AUSTRAC transaction report information data-matching program 13 October 2021
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will acquire AUSTRAC transaction report information data from AUSTRAC for the period of 17 June 2021 through to 30 June 2027.
The data items include information reported to AUSTRAC for:
■ international funds transfer instructions
■ threshold reports (excluding gambling)
■ threshold reports (including gambling)
■ solicitor transactions reports
■ suspicious matters
■ carry mail and physical cash
■ bearer negotiable instruments.
The data elements made available to the ATO will depend on what is captured in the reporting process and they can include:
■ Identifying information of customers and institutions facilitating the transactions
– payee and beneficiary customer identifiers and institution details
– payer and ordering customer identifiers and institution details
– currency owner
– other parties or institutions (organisations represented by agents, unidentified parties, beneficial owner, cheque payer/payee, office holder, account signatory).
■ Identifiers
– Australian business number
– Australian company number
– Australian credit licence number
– Australian Financial Services Licence
– Australian Registered Body Number
– names (legal, main, alternative, former, trading, branch, other)
– addresses (residential, postal, business/residential, country of citizenship, country of incorporation, business, billing, registered office, temporary, unknown, work)
– phone numbers (international, telephone, mobile, fax)
– electronic addresses (website, social media)
– date of Birth, country of birth
– account details (Account type, BSB, account number, Account title, institution name, branch and country
– licence information (drivers, passport, photo ID, membership ID, social security/benefits, student, security, other)
– AUSTRAC remittance details
– foreign tax number
– bank identification code.
■ Transaction details including transaction type, accounts, instruments, amounts and currency.
We estimate that records relating to approximately nine million individuals will be obtained each financial year.
The data will be acquired and matched to ATO data to support the administration and enforcement of tax and superannuation laws. These obligations may include registration, lodgment, reporting and payment responsibilities.
The objectives of this program are to:
■ promote voluntary compliance by communicating how we use external data with our own, to help encourage taxpayers to comply with their tax and super obligations
■ assist in building intelligence about individuals and businesses including broader tax risk trends and strategic analysis
■ gain insights to shape future treatment strategies, which may include educational or compliance activities as appropriate
■ ensure individuals and businesses are fulfilling their tax and super registration, lodgment, reporting and payment obligations
■ identify opportunities to improve system integrity and mitigate tax revenue risk
■ provide insights to support our undertakings with joint regulatory agencies and law enforcement to identify and address the most serious and complex forms of financial crime.
■ enable detection, investigation and/or prosecution of serious financial crime activity including tax evasion, terrorism financing, money laundering or serious and organised crime.
A document describing this program is available at ato.gov.au/dmprotocols.
This program follows the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guidelines on data matching in Australian Government administration (2014) (the guidelines). The guidelines include standards for the use of data-matching as an administrative tool in a way that:
■ complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act)
■ is consistent with good privacy practice.
A full copy of the ATO’s privacy policy can be accessed at ato.gov.au/privacy.