Just when you thought the tax man couldn’t get any busier, the ATO has recently announced that it has embarked on the assignment of matching up income declared on business tax returns against credit and debit cards records that specific banks and institutions have generated through the 2015-15 year.

This is an entirely new operation for the ATO, where the regulator will request major Australian institutions provide the online records of around 90,000 taxpayers who own businesses. The information will then be used to match up nearly a million transactions with merchant accounts, which will allow them to reconcile the actual amount with the value of transactions. The ATO says that the aim of this taskforce is to “ensure that merchants are correctly meeting their tax obligations in relation to business income. These obligations including registration, lodgement, reporting and payment responsibilities”.

The ATO is pushing for businesses to make ‘voluntary disclosures’ of any mistakes before they start the project.

The banks that will be targeted are:

American Express

ANZ

Bank of Queensland

Bendigo & Adelaide Bank

BWA Merchant services

CBA

Diners Club

NAB

St George

Tyro Payments

Westpac.

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