April 06, 2019

Kate Chen

The Inspector General of Taxation (IGT) made nine recommendations to ATO (Australian Taxation Office) for the service improvement. It was mentioned that the review of the Future of the Tax Profession could benefit millions of Australians while they requested billions of dollars in the deductions of work-related expense. 

Based on the recommendation of the Henry Tax Review, the former treasurer Wayne Swan claimed that Rudd government decided to executive this plan to carry out the work-related standard deduction to benefit 6.4 million Australians. However, the proposal was never introduced to Parliament. Although major parties in Australia had similar ideas to standardize the tax deduction system, the high cost was the main reason that made it impossible. 

Besides, IGT pointed out the disadvantages related to the ATO’S digital tools that caused the incomplete submission of tax return, and suggested that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) should have a complete compensation plan for taxpayers who suffered the financial shortcomings because of the system failures.

The ATO previously mentioned that they did not need to follow the commercial standard about their IT systems. However, since ATO has the biggest taxpayers’ data, it is important for ATO to have strong protection software to avoid the cyber-attack.