you received a call from the ATO? Would you:
- Curl up into a ball and rock back and forth
- Put your head in the sand and pretend it never happened
- Make sure it wasn’t a scam call
- Give them all your personal details including your credit card details
- Call Initiative
If your answer was no 5, then you’ve made the right choice. It would be very rare for the ATO to call any of our clients directly. With Initiative as your tax agent, we should be the first people the ATO call if they have any questions about your tax affairs.
The only reason the ATO may call you is if you’ve changed our contact details through your myGov account.
In the past few weeks we’ve noticed the understanding and leniency shown by the ATO (as a result of COVID) to have finished. The ATO are now fining clients for late lodgements, imposing interest on overdue tax debts, chasing tax debts and increasing their audit activity.
Through their ever increasing data matching systems, the ATO are able to look further into your financial affairs. So it is now more important than ever to make sure you keep all your documentation for your tax claims for 7 years. If your documents relate to a capital asset, then you need to keep all documents while you hold the asset and up to 7 years after you dispose of the asset.
While no one wants to be the one to get a tap on the shoulder by the ATO, please don’t forget Initiative are by your side. To mitigate the cost of having us deal with the ATO during an audit, we do also offer audit insurance.
If you have any concerns about any of the above, as always, we’re here to help.
Author
Kim Jay
