Highlights
- Data will be collected of visa-holders for 2020–21 and 2022–23
- This year, ATO to check individuals who received COVID-19 JobKeeper payments were correctly entitled or not
- Exercise regularly undertaken to investigate and take steps to mitigate fraud against the public revenue
The ATO's data matching exercise will cover visa holders such as temporary workers, international students who work in Australia and migration agents who help people migrate to Australia.
“For this program, we collect information from the Department of Home Affairs (Home Affairs) on active and newly granted visas,” the said.
“The data is matched against our records to ensure visa holders, visa sponsors and migration agents are meeting their tax and superannuation obligations.
The ATO this year will also confirm if visa holders who received JobKeeper payment, government’s economic support due to the impact of COVID-19, were entitled to it or not.
“Visa data for 1 March 2020 to 28 March 2021 will be used to assist in confirming eligibility for the government's novel coronavirus (COVID-19) economic response, JobKeeper measure,” the ATO said.
“The data will support pre-issue and post-issue compliance checks enabling us to follow-up potentially false or misleading declarations," it said.
"Undertaking the Home Affairs visa data matching program will assist us in investigating and taking steps to mitigate fraud against public revenue."
Not all taxpaying visa holders will be audited: ATO
Data will be collected from Home Affairs between 2020–21 and 2022–23 financial years.
The number of individuals affected by this data collection is expected to be approximately 10 million each financial year, the ATO said.
Though not all tax-paying visa holders and migration agents will be audited by the ATO under this data matching protocol, the ATO has clarified.
"Visa data is made available to ATO to support our risk profiling and trend analysis of the visa population, to improve our decisions, services and voluntary compliance. Detailed information about this data matching protocol including how the ATO will use the data is available on our ," an ATO spokesperson told SBS Hindi.
Why does ATO look at visa data?
Travellers coming to Australia for travel, work, study or migration need a visa appropriate for their reason for travel.
Visas include different conditions on a person's stay in Australia including engagement with the tax and superannuation systems.
“The visa data-matching program will allow us to identify and address taxation risks in the population of visa holders, visa sponsors, and migration agents,” the ATO says.
The ATO checks will include ensuring appropriate taxation treatment is being applied by employers of visa holders, determining if applicants departing Australia are entitled to access superannuation, identifying incorrect tax refunds, and identifying and cancelling Australian business numbers (ABNs) obtained and used inappropriately by visa holders as contractors when they should be classified as employees among other reasons.
‘Everyone [visa-holder] needs to be aware of this’
Melbourne-based registered migration agent Rohit Mohan says this audit is something visa-holders should be mindful of.
“International students have part-time working rights during the term and can work full-time only during the break or their holidays. This audit allows the ATO to find out if the international students are complying with their visa conditions. They check their income against their working rights,” he says.
“The same applies to employer-sponsored visas to ensure all the obligations such as minimum salary threshold and taxes and superannuation is being met.
“Visa applicants need to be mindful that in Australia, the ATO conducts an audit every year to curb fraud. Everyone needs to be aware of this,” he says.
The ATO’s visa data-matching program has been operating since 2009.
The audit will include the address history of visa applicants and their sponsors; all their arrivals and departures in Australia and details of their education provider if they are on a student visa.
