ATO grabs the electoral roll in its latest tax crackdown

The Australian Tax Office will add the electoral roll to its growing list of data matching sources as part of its latest bid to track down potential tax cheats.

The initiative will see the taxman obtain personal information on about 15 million voters from the Australian Electoral Commission, including their names, residential addresses, gender, date of birth and occupation.

According to the ATO, the extra information will be used by its staff to identify, trace and deal with people who are not meeting their registration, lodgement, reporting and payment obligations under tax and superannuation law.

Where discrepancies are identified, taxpayers will be given at least 28 days to respond before any legal action is taken.

The electoral roll records will be collected on an ongoing basis and will refreshed by the tax office every three months, with the use of the data governed by a protocol published on its website.

“Commonwealth electoral laws and associated regulations require or permit the AEC to make information available to nominated government agencies, political parties and members of parliament,” the ATO said.

“In this data matching program we are the matching agency and sole user of this data set. The electoral laws and regulations prohibit us from sharing this data with anyone else.”

The electoral data will be used in conjunction with a range of existing sources already obtained by the ATO, including motor vehicle registrations, online retail sales, ride-sharing services, rental property records, share transactions, bank records, music royalties, credit card transactions and immigration visas.