It's the highest ever number of returns this early in the financial year. 9News
The tax office is checking up on Australians who have fraudulently claimed JobKeeper assistance.
Despite the rush to fill out tax returns, the ATO has warned people attempting to fraudulently claim COVID-19 assistance such as JobKeeper will be caught. "We know the overwhelming majority of Australians are honest, and we've worked hard help to those people who are impacted by COVID-19 as quickly as possible," ATO Deputy Commissioner Will Day said. "We also have an important role to ensure the integrity of the stimulus measures and when we uncover fraud or people seeking to exploit them, we'll take action, as we know the community would expect us to do.
Some of the fraudulent activity involves others masquerading as financial advisers to help those suffering from hardship access their superannuation."We've received intelligence about a number of dodgy schemes, including the withdrawal of money from superannuation and re-contributing it to get a tax deduction," Mr Day said.
"Not only is this not in the spirit of the measure , severe penalties can be applied to tax avoidance schemes or those found to be breaking the law.For breaking news alerts and livestreams straight to your smartphone sign up to the
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