Compliance
Our tax system relies on your honesty to voluntarily self-assess and comply with your tax obligatons.
Our compliance approach aims to:
- encourage and assist you to comply by providing information and tools
- detect and deter non-compliance by taking a targeted, risk-based approach
- provide a level playing field and minimise disruption to you and your business.
We ensure compliance by employing a range of compliance activities across the taxes and benefits we administer.
Information we exchange with the ATO
We work closely with the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to share information and data.
We use ATO information to:
- identify businesses that should be registered for payroll tax by using the data from business activity statements (BAS)
- identify differences in payroll tax by matching ATO’s data on business wages, salaries and fringe benefits with our data
- identify discrepancies in property-related sales for duties and exemptions for land tax
- identify recipients of first home benefits who receive a duty exemption or concession, and recipients of the First Home Owner Grant who may not have met the eligibility and residency requirements, through rental and tax return information.
The ATO uses our information to:
- identify businesses that should be registered for pay as you go (PAYG) withholding tax
- identify discrepancies in property-related sales with reference to income tax, goods and services tax, fringe benefits tax and capital gains tax.
If you have tax liabilities eg you must lodge a payroll tax return, you may also have federal tax and superannuation liabilities. If you must lodge a payroll tax return, you must also withhold tax from payments to employees and provide superannuation. Check your federal tax and superannuation obligations on the ATO website.
Interest and penalty tax
You will be charged interest and a penalty tax if you commit a 'tax default' under the taxation and revenue laws we administer.
Investigations
Sometimes, you can make errors because you don’t understand your legal obligations. We’ll help you update your tax affairs and understand your obligations. We conduct regular investigations to ensure you pay the correct tax or duty. We provide the highest standards of integrity and service when conducting our investigations.
Computer assisted verification
Sometimes, when we do audits and investigations, we use computer assisted verification techniques to analyse electronic financial records. These techniques are not appropriate in every case.
Phoenix activity
We are a member of an inter-agency Phoenix Taskforce, a whole-of-government approach to combat phoenix activities and identify individuals and entities engaging in fraudulent activity.
Read more about the Phoenix Taskforce.
Compliance hotline
Contact us to make a voluntary disclosure of understated liability, or to report a member of the public. Voluntary disclosures attract a reduced level of interest compared to cases where we identify the understatement.
Read more about voluntary disclosures.
Our 2022-23 compliance results
Land Tax
- investigated 6,625 landholders who did not pay land tax surcharge and identified $96.9million in additional land tax surcharge
- investigated 18,044 landholders who were not assessed for land tax or had incorrect exemptions applied, and identified $248.1million in additional land tax
- investigated over 1,366 customers that were not assessed for Parking Space Levy or had incorrect exemptions applied, and identified $11million in additional Parking Space Levy.
Payroll Tax
- investigated 2,326 registered payroll tax customers and identified over $130 million in additional payroll tax
- undertook lodgement enforcement activity on 7,072 customers and identified over $120million in compliance revenue
- investigated 95 large refund requests and reduced the refund payments by $1.26 million
- identified 615 unregistered businesses with undeclared liabilities, resulting in 88 per cent of those we contacted being assessed for over $10.6 million in additional payroll tax.
Other Business Taxes
- completed 18 insurance duty investigations and identified $2 million in additional duty, interest and penalty
- completed eight mineral royalty investigations with $24.8 in additional royalty identified
- completed 13 health insurance levy investigations and identified $7.4 million in additional levy, interest and penalty.
Our 2021-22 compliance results
Duties
- to ensure the Governance of the Electronic Duties Returns program, conducted 5326 audits of documents processed by clients and transactions flagged due to data mismatches between Revenue NSW and NSW LRS
- undertook a large-scale data led compliance program on transactions identified as potentially liable to Surcharge Purchaser Duty, reviewing 1137 transactions and recovering $39.4M in duty, interest, and penalties
- undertook assessment and compliance of 165 transactions where purchasers were Australian Based Developers that may be entitled to an exemption from surcharge, leading to payments of over $770,000 in additional duty
- conducted 362 landholder duty investigations and identified $72.3 million in duty
investigated 1098 motor vehicle transactions referred by Transport for NSW, leading to collection of $620,000 in additional duty, interest, and penalties - undertook 55 investigations into other potential duties liabilities and identified an additional $3.9 million in duty.
First Home Benefits
- completed 124 investigations into transactions that received a duty exemption or concession, with 81 per cent having to repay the duty, totalling $2.28 million, including interest and penalties
- completed 38 First Home Owner Grant investigations into recipients required to comply with post transaction conditions. 68 per cent of investigations led to the grant needing to be repaid, totalling $480,450 including penalties
- conducted 99 First Home Benefits associated investigations that led to an additional $1.1M in grants/benefits that are required to be repaid.