Tax Planning

Tax Planning services in Australia continue to be a community `hot spot'. These are very popular among the Accounting and Tax Planning Services.

If done well, tax planning could potentially save you money.

But, be careful - The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has designed a strategy for ensuring that aggressive Tax Planning does not affect the goals of ATO. Some of these strategies are:

• The ATO has recognised that aggressive Tax Planning services cut across all segments of the taxpaying population and that there needs to be an integrated whole of ATO approach that cuts across organisational structures.
• A key objective of the ATO has been to develop compliance strategies and approaches which aim to influence long term behaviour. The High Wealth Individuals Taskforce is a good example.
• The High Wealth Individuals Taskforce is managing and implementing a comprehensive compliance program to act on techniques that have been identified as being used by high wealth individuals and associated entities. The ATO continues to examine high wealth individuals based on a risk management approach. The higher risk individuals and associated entities will continue to be subject to close scrutiny including through fieldwork activities and analysis of information in expanded Tax Returns.
• The ATO is taking the initiative in the mass marketed areas of aggressive tax planning. Such schemes are often marketed to large numbers of taxpayers and are designed to achieve outcomes that are clearly not intended under the law.
• The ATO has also introduced a system of product rulings to give potential investors more certainty in respect to the taxation consequences of particular schemes. The objective of the product ruling strategy is to clearly differentiate mass marketed Tax planning services and schemes that the ATO believes accord with the law and those which the ATO does not. This product ruling strategy is currently under review to ensure its efficacy in balancing client service and taxpayer compliance.