In late October last year, a law was ratified to allow the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to disclose the tax debt information of businesses to registered credit reporting bureaus (CRBs). Notably, the legislation enables the ATO to only divulge tax debt information of a business when specific criteria are met.
The criteria contains, among other things, the requirement for the business to have an Australian Business Number (ABN) and have one or more tax debts of at least $100,000 that is overdue by a period of 90 days or more.
Note that the ATO will provide a warning notifying a business in writing if they meet the reporting criteria and give them only 28 days to take action to avoid having the debt information reported.
The intention behind allowing the ATO to report the tax debt information of businesses is to encourage businesses to utilise the ATO to manage debts and to further make large tax debts publicly visible to discourage the creation of debt in the first place.
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