Personalised Service
This information applies to the small-to-medium enterprises (SME) market. The SME market segments comprise:
- economic groups with turnover between $2 million and $250 million
- wealthy individuals and their economic groups with net wealth over $5 million.
This diverse group of taxpayers ranges from simple, single entities to businesses with highly complex group structures to highly wealthy individuals controlling $30 million or more in wealth.
The information reaffirms our commitment to the SME market and our desire to encourage, support and protect willing participation of taxpayers in Australia’s taxation and superannuation systems. It also reflects our commitment to openness and transparency, lower compliance costs and improved ways of managing tax risk.
The information informs SME market taxpayers of their key rights and obligations and is intended to help them adopt and maintain high standards of governance and propriety in their tax affairs. We provide important information on our processes including risk-assessment procedures, compliance activities and our private-group approach.
We have placed particular focus on the need for sound working relationships, and on how we will interact with taxpayers and their advisers throughout our compliance activities. We base our compliance approaches on our desired outcomes and the levels of risk we observe. We detail the behaviours taxpayers can expect from us and the behaviours we expect of taxpayers. We take account of individual circumstances, recognising that some smaller enterprises may lack access to the same level of resources and expertise as larger enterprises, even though they deal with equally complex issues.
With this in mind, we emphasise the importance of working together with SME market taxpayers through positive engagement, ongoing dialogue and the early escalation of issues. This approach encourages both sides to work through situations where the law appears indeterminate and different views are held. By providing the right information and making early contact, our aim is to help taxpayers achieve practical certainty and reduce compliance costs.
We intend for our statements of mutual expectations to facilitate frank and open dialogue with SME market taxpayers, resolve issues and concerns in a timely manner and address recommendations made by the Inspector General of Taxation.
Through this approach we hope to build a strong and positive relationship with the SME market – helping make Australia a great place to do business.