Gazette notice: Commissioner of Taxation - Notice of a data-matching program

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will acquire ride sourcing data to identify individuals that may be engaged in providing ride sourcing services during the 2019-20 to 2021-22 financial years. The data items include:

■          identification details - driver identifier; Australian Business Number (ABN); driver name; birth date; mobile phone number; email address; address

■          transaction details - bank account details; aggregated payment details (gross fares, net amount paid to driver, and all other income to which Goods and Services Tax may or may not apply to) of all payments received in the relevant period.

■          We estimate that records relating to approximately 250,000 individuals will be obtained each financial year.

The data will be acquired and matched to with certain sections of ATO data holdings to identify taxpayers that can be provided with tailored information to help them meet their tax and superannuation obligations, or to ensure compliance with taxation law. These obligations may include registration, lodgment, reporting and payment responsibilities.

The objectives of this program are to:

■          promote voluntary compliance and increase community confidence in the integrity of the tax and superannuation systems

■          identify and educate individuals who may be failing to meet their registration and/or lodgment obligations and assist them to comply

■          gain insights from the data that may help us to develop and implement engagement strategies to improve voluntary compliance which include educational or compliance activities as appropriate

■          obtain intelligence to increase the ATO’s understanding of the behaviours and compliance profiles of individuals and businesses that provide ride sourcing services

■          ensure compliance with registration, lodgment, correct reporting and payment of tax and superannuation obligations.

A document describing this program is available at ato.gov.au/dmprotocols.

This program follows the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guidelines on data matching in Australian Government administration (2014) (the guidelines). The guidelines include standards for the use data-matching as an administrative tool in a way that complies with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) and the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act), and are consistent with good privacy practice.

A full copy of the ATO’s privacy policy can be accessed at ato.gov.au/privacy.