SERIOUS FINANCIAL CRIME TASKFORCE SHARPENS ITS FOCUS: IT'S PRIORITIES FOR 2026
The ATO-led Serious Financial Crime Taskforce (SFCT) has outlined its priorities for 2026.
The SFCT is a joint agency taskforce which seeks to identify and address financial crime in Australia. Given the pervasive manner in which financial crime can play out, it is unsurprising that various Australian agencies such as the Australian Border Force, AUSTRAC and the AFP work collaboratively with other agencies on this initiative.
The SFCT’s six strategic priorities include money laundering, exploitation of virtual assets/digital technology, identity fraud, migrant worker exploitation, and tax crime.
In relation to tax crime, there is a particular focus on GST refund fraud, false invoicing, electronic sales suppression tools, and fraud in the precious metals industry.
GST refund fraud gained notoriety via the recent emergence of social media promotion of illegal schemes relating to establishing illegitimate ABNs and fictitious input tax credit claims (which were often paid forthwith by the ATO without scrutiny). But GST fraud is broader than this subset. It often includes false and artificial invoicing between related entities, the beneficial control of which can often be masked to the ATO via the use of straw directors (a phenomenon exposed in the Plutus Payroll/Operation Elbrus saga).
False invoicing can extend beyond indirect tax fraud through the illegal claiming of income tax deductions and research and development tax offsets (which result in refunds to the claimants).
The ATO is, as expected, encouraging tip-offs when a taxpayer wishes to report suspected illegal behaviour. But one can assume the ATO’s data-gathering extends beyond dob-ins and relies also on electronic data matching, shared intelligence from other agencies and the technical analysis of its many taxation officers based within its crime-focused business lines as well as internal referrals from other areas within the ATO.
The scope of the ATO’s power to initiate criminal prosecutions for alleged taxation offences is broad and many of those offences, particularly the less severe offences, can be hard for taxpayers to defend given the black-and-white nature of the offences (E.g. failing to lodge a return in relation to a notice). The most serious tax and fraud related criminal prosecutions are also available for the ATO/CDPP in appropriate cases and the maximum penalties are, as one might expect, severe.
A digital economy, the emergence of generative AI and on-going cost of living pressures present an atmosphere where the prevalence of tax and financial crime increase. On the other side of that coin, the Australian government’s focus and investment in its staff and technology means the SFCT are likely to continue identifying, targeting and prosecution illegal activities within their purview.
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