Managing ATO Asset Betterment Audits
Overview
Gain crucial insights into ATO’s indirect audits and asset betterment techniques to better navigate tax compliance for small businesses and private wealth.
As part of its small business and private wealth programs, the ATO conducts a significant program of ‘indirect audits’, using techniques like ‘asset betterments’ to determine taxpayers’ taxable income.
This session is intended to give tax practitioners, accountants and lawyers an improved understanding of the ATO’s approaches in conducting ‘asset betterment’ audits and other types of ‘indirect audit methodologies’, covering:
- Why the ATO are likely to have selected a taxpayer for an ‘asset betterment’ audit
- The ATO Charter commentary on reviews and audits
- Overview of ATO access & information gathering powers and how these may play out for ‘asset betterment’ audits
- Importance of understanding the ATO ‘risk hypothesis’ for an ‘asset betterment’ audit – & how to explain to clients
- How to better engage with the ATO team on an ‘asset betterment’ audit and why this is so important for the client and the practitioner
- Overview of ATO assessment law and principles – in the context of an ‘asset betterment’ audits – using case law
- Overview of shortfall and default assessment penalties – looking at likely results for ‘asset betterment’ audits – looking at relevant cases
- Overview of contesting adverse ‘asset betterment’ audit decisions – focusing on the need to not only prove the assessment ‘excessive’, but to provide a substitute taxable income figure – drilling down on the key case law
- Other practical issues for practitioners and their clients for ‘asset betterment’ audits and resulting calculations of taxable income
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will gain an improved understanding of the ways in which an ‘asset betterment’ audit:
- Why clients may be selected for such audits
- How the ATO are likely to conduct such audits
- How practitioners may be able to influence the course of such audits
- How the ATO is likely to approach shortfall penalties in such audits
- The burden in challenging ATO assessments from such audits
- The practical imbalance in power between taxpayers and the ATO
Suited to:
Accountants, tax practitioners, BAS agents, lawyers and other practitioners serving small businesses, private groups and wealthy individuals.
This On Demand Includes:
- Recording of the Live Webinar, which can be viewed multiple times
- PowerPoint Presentation
- Verbatim Transcript, with Searchability
- Supporting Documentation
- CPD Quiz
- CPD Certificate
Course syllabus
3 lessons
- Video – Managing ATO Asset Betterment AuditsVideo
- Feedback Survey 2024Survey
- Knowledge QuizTest
Your presenter
Bruce CollinsTax Controversy Partners
is the founder and principal solicitor at Tax Controversy Partners Pty Limited, currently helping clients to resolve all types of tax issues issues with the ATO and SROs. Before moving into private practice in 2017, Bruce worked for over 35 years in the Tax Office, a third of this time as a Senior Executive in what is now Client Engagement Group, covering most ATO functions. Bruce was the leader of the Technical & Case Leadership area in Private Wealth for several years prior to leaving the ATO, as well as having previously been the strategic, technical and compliance leader for many of the ATO’s audit programs. Bruce was heavily involved with the development of the ATO policies on ‘default assessments’ and the use of ‘indirect audit methodologies’, including ‘asset betterments’.
Bruce has an Accounting Certificate (1989), a First-Class Honours Degree in Law (1995), a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (1996), a Masters of Taxation (2003) and a Masters of International Taxation (2006). Bruce is a Chartered Tax Advisor with the Tax Institute, a member of the Law Society of NSW and is both a member of the Law Council of Australia and current Chair of their SME Committee.