Maintaining the integrity of the revenue system through encouraging high levels of voluntary compliance remains a cornerstone of what we do. Customers paying and claiming the right amounts of their own accord is the most effective way to ensure compliance.
To support compliance, we look at everything from policy settings, the design of products and services, the advice and education we provide, through to the campaigns and interventions we run, including how we enforce the law when we see non-compliance.
Our aim is to collect and pay the right amounts at the right time, and work with those who are unable or unwilling to meet their obligations to get them back on track.
This starts with good policy design. Early engagement through the Generic Tax Policy Process is critical to designing policy that will have high levels of compliance.
We design our systems and processes to stop a lot of non-compliance from happening, with pre-population and in-built checks that stop errors in real time. Creating systems and processes that are as intuitive, simple and low effort as possible supports most people to get things right.
When people get things wrong, we respond in a range of ways.
Enforcement activities such as investigations, audit and prosecutions are an important part of our work and we will continue to increase our efforts in these areas. While our systems can deal with less complex enforcement activities, human intervention is required when customers do not respond or deliberately avoid their obligations. We’ll continue to take firm action when we see wrongdoing and fraud and target our resources to the areas of highest risk.