Commissioner of Taxation
NOTICE OF A DATA MATCHING PROGRAM
The ATO will acquire data from the Department of Human Services – Medicare where individuals have been granted an exemption from paying the Medicare Levy for the 2013, 2014 and 2015 financial years.
It is estimated that records for 130,000 individuals will be obtained each year.
These records will be electronically matched with certain sections of ATO data holdings to identify non-compliance with registration, lodgment, reporting and payment obligations under taxation and superannuation laws.
This program is called the Medicare Levy Exemption Certificate data matching program and is purpose is to ensure taxpayers are not unfairly avoiding their obligations with paying the Medicare levy and in certain situations this extends to the Medicare levy surcharge. Its objectives are to:
- to ensure taxpayers who are exempt from the Medicare levy are receiving their entitled exemption
- to ensure taxpayers not entitled to the exemption are not unfairly avoiding their taxation obligations
- to promote voluntary compliance and strengthen community confidence in the integrity of the tax system, and
- to provide possible opportunities to satisfy the ATO’s wider compliance.
The ATO is authorised under section 264 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 to collect this data from the Department of Human Services – Medicare.
In very limited and specific circumstances the ATO is lawfully permitted to on-disclose individual records to third parties, including state and territory revenue offices and law enforcement agencies. It is not likely that this data will be provided to any Australian Tax Treaty partners.
A document describing this program has been prepared in consultation with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. A copy of this document is available by sending an email to SpecialPurposeDataSteward@ato.gov.au
The ATO complies with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s The use of data matching in Commonwealth administration – guidelines (2014) which includes standards for data matching to protect the privacy of individuals. A full copy of the ATO’s privacy policy can be accessed at www.ato.gov.au/privacy