Commissioner of Taxation

NOTICE OF A DATA MATCHING PROGRAM

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will request and collect online selling data relating to registrants that sold goods and services of a total value of $10,000 or greater in either or both of the periods from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012 and 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013.

This acquired data will be electronically matched with certain sections of ATO data holdings to identify possible non-compliance with registration, reporting, lodgment and payment obligations under taxation law.

Inclusion in the program is based on the following principles:

• The data owner or its subsidiary operates a business in Australia that is governed by Australian law
• The data owner provides an online market place for businesses and individuals to buy and sell goods and services
• The data owner tracks the activity of registered sellers
• The data owner has clients whose annual trading activity amounts to $10,000 or more
• The data owner has trading activity for the year/s in focus
• Where the client base of a data owner does not present an omitted or unreported income risk, or the administrative or financial cost of collecting the data exceeds the benefit the data may provide, the data owner may be excluded from the program.

In accordance with this purpose and the principles listed above data will be sought from the following:

• eBay Australia & New Zealand Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of eBay International AG which owns and operates www.ebay.com.au.

It is expected that records relating to between 15,000 and 25,000 individuals per financial year will be matched.

This program is called the 2012 and 2013 online selling data matching program and it will enable the ATO to:

• Address the compliance behaviour of individuals and businesses selling goods and services via the online selling site who may not be correctly meeting their taxation obligations, particularly those with undeclared income and incorrect lodgment and reporting for goods and services tax, and
• Be more strategic in its approach to determine appropriate educational and compliance strategies to encourage voluntary compliance for taxpayers in the online selling market to ensure they meet their taxation obligations.

A document describing this program and how the collected data will be used by the ATO has been prepared and lodged with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. A copy of this document is available by emailing SpecialPurposeDataSteward@ato.gov.au with reference to the online selling data matching program.

The ATO complies with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Guidelines, The use of Data Matching in Commonwealth Administration, which includes standards for data matching to protect the privacy of individuals.