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Australian Taxation Office
Audit strategy overview
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is the Australian Government’s principal revenue collection agency. The ATO’s key role is to manage and shape tax, excise and superannuation systems that fund services for Australians. The business intent of the ATO is to ‘optimise voluntary compliance and make payments under the law in a way that builds community confidence’. To help satisfy this intent, the ATO has a range of processes and practices to help taxpayers understand their rights, to make it as easy as possible to comply, and to verify compliance.
Particular risks for ATO administration in 2011–12 include:
- realising the benefits of improvements to the ATO’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) environment developed through its long-running ‘Change Program’;
- appropriate responses to changes in taxpayer behaviours; and
- responding to the changing global economy.
Given the ATO’s key risks and roles, the ANAO has given priority to audits that examine the delivery of services to taxpayers, particularly services that are underpinned by the ATO’s evolving ICT environment.