Australian Taxation Office (ATO) To Track Down Crypto Tax Evaders

It’s never a good idea to evade taxes. Nobody actually likes taxes, but you sure have to pay them or you might end up in deep trouble with the government. Now, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has decided to launch a new data-matching program, which will be used in order to hunt tax evaders and make them pay their taxes.

So far, many crypto traders were able to escape from the government by simply not declaring, however, it seems as this technology has the potential to become a problem for people who want to escape taxes.

According to data from the government, from half a million to one full million Australians hold crypto right now. Since the numbers are only estimates, they may vary greatly. The government is concerned that people may be using cryptos in order to hide their funds so that they will not need to declare them via the traditional channels.

Now, with the help of regulatory agencies and technology, the government is planning to identify the ones using cryptos to pay the wrong amount of tax and save money illegally.

Will Day, deputy commissioner of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), has affirmed that the office actually want to “help taxpayer to get it right”, so they can pay the right amount of money to the government, a claim that that obviously looks facetious.

So far, the main problem that the government might face in its new journey to hunt down crypto tax evaders is that the data owned bythe government is very limited as third parties do not have many legal obligations in order to actually divulge the information of their clients.

However, the office affirms that it already has an acceptable amount of data and that the data-matching program will start to be used soon. As more data is collected, the results are also expected to become more accurate.

As soon as someone is identified, the person will have 28 days to clarify the information before it is prosecuted by the government for tax evasion.

Australia May Receive More Money From Crypto Than Ever

In fact, it looks like Australia might receive revenue from crypto taxes this year than ever before. People are already supposed to fill their crypto taxes this year. In case they had losses, they can even use them to reduce their profits when declaring taxes, however, most people are still not aware of this.

Overall, it was a very mixed year for cryptos in Australia. Huobi decided to shut down its operations in the country for now, but Binance launched a new cash for crypto service in the country. The Binance-owned operation requires a Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure, so its data will very possibly be looked by the government.