The Assistant Treasurer and Minister Assisting for Deregulation, David Bradbury, has today released the Inspector-General of Taxation's Review into the Australian Taxation Office's administration of class rulings.
In this review, the Inspector-General examined information, systems and processes relating to the ATO's administration and publication of class rulings over the five year period between 2006-07 and 2010-11.
Overall, the Inspector-General observed that the class ruling system is a useful element of the tax system because, amongst other things, class rulings effectively mitigate operational costs and reduce risk by providing greater administrative certainty to relevant taxpayers. However, he also acknowledged that there were areas for improvement.
In this regard, the Inspector-General made eight recommendations in the Report, which are directed at improving the administration of class rulings' processes and related areas. This included case management, reporting, record keeping, external performance standards, communication, transparency, Australian Taxation Office (ATO) staff awareness of existing procedures and policies and the ATO's Siebel system search functionality.
The ATO broadly agreed with all the Inspector-General's recommendations in the Report (agreeing with six recommendations in full, one in part, and one in principle). Further, the Inspector-General has worked with the ATO through the review to settle on a significant program of work, which when implemented, should deliver improvements to the administration of the class rulings system.
"I commend both the ATO and the Inspector-General for their collaborative work on this Report to enhance the operation of the class rulings system, which will further improve the tax administration for the benefit of all taxpayers," said Mr Bradbury.
The Inspector-General's report, including the ATO's response, is available on the Inspector-General of Taxation website.