In response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the Australian economy, the Government reduced the deeming rates that are used by the Department of Social Services (via Centrelink) for income test calculation purposes. The reduction in the deeming rates means that more self-funded retirees are eligible for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC).
We have summarised the key points for the WA Seniors Card and the CSHC including eligibility and how to apply below but please contact our superannuation manager Helen Cooper if you need assistance.
WA Seniors Card – Department of Communities
WA Seniors Card Holders are entitled to a range of government concessions and discounts. The Seniors Card is combined with the Transperth SmartRider card. Benefits include:
Concession fares plus free off-peak travel through Transperth at certain times on weekdays and free travel on weekends and public holidays.
50% concession on regional transport through Transwa services
Rebate of up to 25% on Water & Local Government Rate charges capped at $100 each; if a property is owned with a non-concession cardholder, the amount of rebate is reduced accordingly. (Please see the additional benefits on the following page if you also hold a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card)
25% rebate for Emergency Services Levy included in Rates Notice
50% rebate on driver’s licence
Discounted entry to the Art Gallery, Museum, Perth Zoo, National Parks and Rottnest Island accommodation – refer to the Concessions WA website for further information
A Directory from over 600 businesses is posted to all Seniors Card holders every 2 years and can be sourced online.
To qualify:
To be eligible you need to be aged 63 years or above, please refer to the table below
Working less than 25 hours per week of paid employment (averaged over 12-month period)
Permanent Resident of Australia
The WA Seniors Card is a lifelong card that does not need to be renewed as long as the eligibility criteria are met.
Application Form is available on the Department of Communities WA Seniors Card Centre website www.seniorscard.wa.gov.au
Download the Application Form from the above website or pick up a copy at the WA Seniors Card
Centre or at your local Australia Post outlet
Telephone 6551 8800 or 1800 671 233 (country free call)
Email: info@seniorscard.wa.gov.au
Commonwealth Seniors Health Card – Department of Human Services
The Commonwealth Seniors Health Care Card is available to self-funded retirees who have reached Age Pension age (currently 66 years or older for both men and women) and who are not eligible to receive the Government Age Pension. This health card is subject to an adjusted taxable income test plus any deemed amount from account-based pensions. There is no assets test applicable.
If you hold a Seniors Card AND a Seniors Health Card you are entitled to receive:
50% rebate on WA annual Water and Council Rate charges capped at $600 for Water Service Charges and $750 for Local government rates for the 2020 rating year (see Notes below)
50% rebate on Emergency Services Levy included in Council Rates (see Notes below)
100% rebate on Driver’s licence (see Notes below)
50% rebate on vehicle licence fee (see Notes below)
Discounts on Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescription medicines
Government provides financial incentives for GPs to bulk-bill concession card holders
Reduction in the cost of out of hospital medical expenses through Medicare Safety Net
Concessional travel on Great Southern Rail services (The Ghan, Indian Pacific and The Overland)
Notes: Both the Water & Local Council rebates are claimed online through the Water Corporation in the one form. If a property is owned with a non-concession cardholder, the amount of rebate is reduced accordingly.
The vehicle and driver’s licence concessions are claimed on the same Department of Transport
Application for Concession – C1 form which currently needs to be posted or presented by hand.
To qualify:
Reached Pension Age – currently 66 years or older
From 1 July 2021 the qualifying age for Age Pension will increase to 66 years and 6 months reaching 67 years from 1 July 2023
You do not qualify for the Age Pension or Veteran Affairs benefits
Australian Resident
As at 20 September 2019, have an annual adjusted taxable income of less than:
$55,808 if you are single
$89,290 for couples
$111,616 couples separated due to ill health or respite care
Note – Adjusted Taxable income is the sum of:
Taxable income as per your personal Australian Taxation Office Notice of Assessment
Add total net investment loss – e.g. rental property and financial investment losses
Add any foreign income received that wasn’t taxable
Add the value of any employer provided benefits above $1,000 – e.g. Car, Health Insurance
Add reportable superannuation contributions and reportable fringe benefits
If you are granted a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card on or after 1 January 2015, deemed income from an Account Based Pension entitlement including income deemed from an Account Based Pension owned by a card holder’s partner who is aged 60 years or more.
The Deeming rates are generally updated annually in July however adjustments were made as part of the COVID-19 stimulus packages announced in March 2020 lowering the deeming rates.
Based on the above rates, if for example you have no other taxable income, you can qualify for the Commonwealth Seniors card if your Account Based Pension entitlement/s are below the following:
Single – Account Based Pension entitlement of $2,526,400 = deemed income of $55,808
Couples – Combined Account Based Pension entitlements of $4,045,066 = deemed income of $89,290
If your investment return is higher than the deemed income, the extra income does not count towards your assessable income. You may be able to get a deeming exemption in some cases.
There is no asset test applicable to the Commonwealth Seniors Card.
You can apply for a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card if you already have a Centrelink online account or through your myGov account linked to Centrelink. Otherwise print and complete the Claim for a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card form available on the Human Services website www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/forms/sa296.
You will need to provide supporting information including a DVA Schedule or complete an additional form ‘Details of Income Stream Product’ in relation to any Account Based Pensions held.
Alternatively, please contact our Helen Cooper at our office if you need assistance with completing an application or if you are unsure if you qualify.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has a broad range of information gathering powers which have been helped by improvements in technology, connections with other Governments as well as increased mandated reporting requirements. The information gathered allows the ATO to use this information in a number of ways, such as verifying the information supplied by Australian taxpayers in relation to their tax affairs.
Some of the ways that the ATO gathers information is through:
Taxpayer reporting regime
Third Party parting regime
Data exchange
Social media and online presence
Telecommunication providers
Motor vehicle registry data
Toll road user data
Family Law Courts
Data leaks
In this article I will run through some of the above measures that that ATO uses to give you an understanding of the information that the ATO is collecting and how it is being used.
Under the taxpayer reporting regime, this not only includes the lodgement of your annual income tax return, but also includes the following lodgements, which all provide data to the ATO for cross-checking purposes:
Single Touch Payroll
SuperStream reporting
Single Touch Payroll has meant that employers are now reporting payments made for work, services and superannuation guarantee liabilities in respect of each employee, as the payments are made, whether it be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. This has resulted in timely data that has improved the ATO’s visibility over employers’ compliance behaviour as well as providing the information for prefilling individual taxpayers income tax returns.
SuperStream reporting is the mechanism by which employers must pay employee superannuation guarantee contributions to superannuation funds. The information from this reporting allows the ATO to check the superannuation guarantee payments being made by employers against the information that the ATO receives from Single Touch Payroll data collected.
Under the Third-Party Reporting regime, the ATO obtains the information from the following means:
Taxable Payments Reporting System;
Business transactions through payment systems from banks and financial institutions;
Share and unit transactions from listed entities, ASIC and managed funds;
Real property transactions by state and territory revenue agencies;
Digital transactions from online selling and sharing platforms such as Uber, eBay and Airbnb; and
Cryptocurrency designated service providers
Taxable Payments Reporting System is primarily designed to assist the ATO in identifying contractors who may not be meeting their tax and lodgement obligations in relation to the following industries:
Building and construction services
Cleaning services
Courier or Road Freight services
Information technology (IT) services
Security, investigation or surveillance services
Australian banks and financial institutions provide transactions to the ATO annually from EFTPOS machines and online payment facilities of their clients. Australian financial institutions also provide the ATO the details of foreign residents with bank accounts in Australia, on an annual basis, which the ATO then exchanges with its relevant foreign partners.
Listed entities, ASIC and managed funds provide the details of all buy and sale transactions of shares and units. Investment bodies including financial institutions, public companies, solicitors, government bodies, bodies corporate, trustee companies, betting companies and unit trusts are required to report their investors’ investment income to the ATO by 31 October each year. This information is used by the ATO to compare against capital gain transactions and trust or dividend income reported in income tax returns.
Real property transactions, such as buy and sell information, is provided by state and territory revenue agencies to the ATO on a quarterly basis and is being used by the ATO to check property capital gains transactions reported in income tax returns.
eBay has been providing the ATO with data in relation to sellers whose annual trading activity is more than $10,000 since 2015 financial year. In October 2019, Airbnb advised its property hosts that it had provided the data of 190,000 property owners and hosts to the ATO, which detailed the income they have received from the platform. From 1 July 2022, the sharing economy will be required to report ID and income details for clients from all ride sourcing and short-term accommodation platforms. Other platforms such as asset sharing, food delivery and tasking-based platforms will be required to provide this information from 1 July 2023.
The ATO’s concerns about taxpayers on sharing economy platforms are:
for ride sharing drivers, the ATO is concerned with making sure that they are registered for GST;
failure to report income; and
over-claiming deductions by listing their properties on sharing economy rental platforms to allege that their property is genuinely available for rent in respect of a particular period, when in fact it is not really available as they don’t respond to inquiries or ever rent the property
ATO has also been collecting data from cryptocurrency designated service providers operating in Australia in relation to cryptocurrency accounts and transactions, which is being used by the ATO to check against capital gains transactions for cryptocurrency reported in income tax returns.
International borders are no longer a barrier to obtaining offshore information and foreign jurisdictions have entered into information exchange agreements with Australia, whether this be through our Double Tax Agreements with 45 countries or through Tax Information Exchange Agreements that have been arranged with 36 other countries. However, these are still subject to the recipient country’s secrecy laws.
One of the more interesting measures that the ATO implemented as a means to check on Australian taxpayers has been through the investigation of taxpayers online presence including social media to see if this agrees with the income declared in the income tax return. Some taxpayers social media accounts have shown that they were living the ‘high’ life when there was very little income being declared in their income tax returns. Other have been caught with online businesses from which they have not been declaring any income.
A data leak occurs when confidential information is shared by an individual or a network with government agencies, media outlets, or other organisations usually with the intent of exposing individuals, groups, or businesses linked to potential criminal activity. Some of the data leaks that we have seen in recent years that the ATO has used for investigation purposes are the Swiss bank account information and transactions, the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers. The ATO is still working with domestic and international partners to process the Paradise Papers data in determining unreported income by Australian taxpayers.
The information gathered from all of the above methods is then used by the ATO for the following:
Prefilling income tax returns
Categorising and selecting taxpayers
Conduct audits
Data matching letters
Checks on Tax Agents
Checks on employers and industry groups
Collecting tax debts
Benchmarking
Identifying employer obligation non‐compliance
So, there are many ways for the ATO to check what has been, and even what has not been, but should have been, reported in an income tax return.
