The Australian Government Department of Human Services

NOTICE OF A DATA MATCHING PROJECT

The Non Employment Income Data Matching (NEIDM) project is a data matching process which will enable the Department of Human Services (department) to match income data it collects from customers with tax return related data reported to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).  The Taxation Administration Act 1953 authorises the ATO to provide relevant data to the department. 

The NEIDM project will assist the department to identify social welfare recipients who may not have disclosed income and assets to the department.  Data received from the ATO will be electronically matched with certain departmental records to identify non-compliance with income or other reporting obligations.

The department expects to match each of the approximately 7 million unique records held in its Centrelink database.  Based on non-compliance criteria, the department anticipates it will examine approximately 20,000 records in the first phase of the project.

The department will use customers’ information in the context of the NEIDM project to:

• verify the information reported to it by customers;

• identify social welfare recipients who may not have disclosed income to the department;

• match and validate the Tax Return and the Pay As You Go data sets;
• identify discrepancies in the income declared to the department by the customer; and
• consider whether the department will initiate relevant compliance action in relation to a particular customer (including debt recovery or a referral to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions).

The class of people who may be affected by the NEIDM project will include welfare recipients who have lodged a Tax Return with the ATO during 2011 to 2014.

The department’s NEIDM project has been informed by the Office of the Australian Commissioner’s Guidelines on Data Matching in Australian Government Administration.  Those Guidelines include standards for data matching activities to protect the privacy of individuals.  The department has prepared a program protocol which describes the NEIDM project, in accordance with those Guidelines.  Copies of the protocol are available from:

Case Selection Section

Level 2

Louisa Lawson Building

25 Cowlishaw Street

Greenway ACT 2900