[ad_1]
Billions of dollars have been paid to help people and businesses affected by the pandemic, but investigations are revealing whether they are doing it right.
The Australian Taxation Office is trying to recover hundreds of millions of dollars as individuals and companies commit fraud by defrauding Covid-19 stimulus payments (such as JobKeeper and early withdrawal from pension plans).
It launched the JobKeeper Payment compliance program and identified a JobKeeper overpayment of $248 million.
An ATO spokesperson revealed that so far, A$138 million has been recovered, but A$82 million in repayment is still being pursued.
But they added that the tax agency decided not to recover $64 million “because they were deemed to have declared in good faith and passed on to employees.”
The JobKeeper program eventually paid more than $89 billion to nearly 3.8 million employees who worked for more than 1 million companies.
An ATO spokesperson said: “We have reviewed more than 200 cases of alleged fraudulent JobKeeper payments.”
“After review, many of these issues were deemed unsuitable for criminal processing. We are prioritizing criminal processing matters that involve more deliberate or deliberate arrangements, more complicated arrangements and repeated attempts, or arrangements involving tax professionals.”
related: “Not a game”: ATO warns crypto investors
AFP participation
However, it is revealed that the mission of the Australian Federal Police is to deal with suspected violations of stimulus measures through its Serious Financial Crime Task Force (SFCT).
Five operations focused on JobKeeper payments, and four operations focused on early release of pension plans.
At the same time, according to the ATO, identity theft affected approximately 2,800 applications for early pension payments, valued at less than A$18 million, although most of them were blocked or recovered by fraudsters.
To date, 47 companies are seeking voluntary repayment of JobKeeper, an ATO spokesperson added.
They said: “Of these 33 people, US$159 million has been repaid, and the ATO is discussing another US$66 million with 14 other people. A total of US$225 million may have to be repaid.”
“These companies are entitled to JobKeeper payment, but have decided to repay.”
At least 20 companies have publicly disclosed that they have voluntarily paid or are repaying the JobKeeper fund, including Toyota, Domino’s Pizza, Knicks Carly and Super Retail Group.
Criminal tax offence
The ATO also pointed out the possibility of criminal prosecution for tax violations. 20 investigations have been completed and 4 are in progress.
An ATO spokesperson said that two people have been convicted of making false and misleading statements in violation of the Tax Administration Act of 1953, and two people are currently appearing in court for making false and misleading statements.
related: Tax claims you can’t escape
Criminal prosecutions are being considered against the other seven pieces of evidence.
“We also issued six warning letters regarding JobKeeper. After investigating the other three matters, we assessed that criminal prosecution was inappropriate,” they said. “We also penalized more than 115 JobKeeper issues.”
Cash flow improvement plan
Some companies have also been found to invent wages in order to qualify for subsidies.
Eligible businesses and non-profit organizations that hire employees can earn a cash flow increase of US$20,000 to US$100,000.
An ATO spokesperson said that the ATO is currently investigating a suspected criminal tax crime related to the plan.
They added that as of May 2021, approximately 817,000 businesses have been processed as eligible for increased cash flow, and a total of $35.5 billion in cash flow increase credits are available for eligible applications.
They said: “But the ATO system prevented approximately 243,000 non-eligible entities from obtaining cash flow increase credits when submitting activity statements.”
“Due to the evidence of the plan, the ATO rejected approximately 110 entities and rejected approximately 1,000 entities because their total turnover related to the cash flow increase measures exceeded US$50 million.”
[ad_2]
Source link
