Australian Taxation Office
Section 1: Overview
The role of the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) is to manage and shape taxation, excise and superannuation systems that fund services for Australians, giving effect to social and economic policy. Through these systems the Tax Office is the Australian Government’s principal revenue management agency. In 2007-08, the Tax Office will collect 90.3 per cent of the Australian Government’s revenue on behalf of the Australian community.
The main role of the Tax Office is to administer legislation for taxes, superannuation and excise (but not customs duty). In doing this, the Tax Office addresses broad issues affecting Australia’s revenue system, such as aggressive tax planning, persistent tax debtors, globalisation and the cash economy.
The Tax Office also supports the delivery of community benefits, having roles in other services, including:
- Private health insurance;
- Family assistance;
- Fuel grants and benefit schemes;
- Valuation Services; and
- Cross agency support, such as working with Centrelink to reduce benefit fraud, with the Child Support Agency to ensure income transfer for the care of children, and with the Australian Bureau of Statistics to reduce the cost to the community of collecting statistical data.
1.1 Summary of agency contributions to outcomes
The products and services delivered by the agency (outputs and administered policies, products and services) which contribute to the achievement of outcomes for the Tax Office are summarised in Table 1.1 on the following page and Figure 2 on page 208.
Table 1.1: Contribution to outcomes
