Australia is changing its laws on the confidentially of taxpayer information.
The Treasury issued a draft Bill on Friday for public consultation, which proposes to consolidate, into a single comprehensive framework, taxation secrecy and disclosure provisions that are found across 18 taxation law acts.
In addition to simplifying and reducing the volume of the existing law, the draft will maintain current levels of disclosures the tax office can make to other governmental agencies; introduce some new disclosure provisions where the public benefit in disclosure outweighs taxpayer privacy; and include clear rules to govern the disclosure of information the tax authorities can provide to another agency or entity.
Tax professionals have criticised the numerous amendments over the years to the secrecy and disclosure provisions in the tax laws, which have resulted in inconsistent protection of taxpayer information and increased privacy risks
The deadline for submissions is April 17.
