What the tax man saw....

While we wait to find out exactly what is in the Henry Tax Review, the Australian Taxation Office has published its latest statistics which are in a nutshell:

For the 2007–08 income year:

• 14.8 million returns were lodged, an increase of 6.7% from 2006–07
• 12,640,767 individuals lodged tax returns
• individual returns represented 85.2% of all returns lodged
• the proportion of individuals lodging returns using e–tax increased to 17.7%
• $7.7 billion in tax bonus payments were paid to 8.8 million individuals based on their 2007–08 tax return.
• 79.5% of individuals were salary and wage earners
• 13.7% of companies were in the rental, hiring and real estate services industry
• 25.9% of partnerships were in the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry
• 17.8% of trusts were in the rental, hiring and real estate services industry
• trusts experienced the largest growth in the number of returns lodged, with an increase of 8.3% from 2006–07
• individuals accounted for 19.6% of total income, 62.5% of taxable income and 64.4% of net tax
• companies accounted for 76.1% of total income, 26.7% of taxable income and 30.6% of net tax
• super funds accounted for 4.3% of total income, 10.7% of taxable income and 5.0% of net tax
• transfers providing assistance to families and individuals (excluding the one-off tax bonus payment) totalled more than $2.4 billion, a 2.1% decrease from 2006–07.

For the 2008–09 financial year:

• 2.6% fewer fringe benefits tax returns were lodged than in 2007–08
• fringe benefits tax collections totalled $3.4 billion, a decrease of 1.3% from 2007–08
• GST liabilities were $41.5 billion, a decrease of less than 1% from 2007–08
• excise liabilities were $24.3 billion, an increase of 3.1% from 2007–08 liabilities
• liabilities from the wine equalisation tax were $729 million, a 13.2% increase from 2007–08
• luxury car tax liabilities were $376 million, a decrease of 15.9% from 2007–08
• PAYG withholding liabilities were $116.9 billion, an increase of 2.0% from 2007–08
• PAYG instalments were $65.1 billion, a decrease of 7.4% from 2007–08
• During the 2008–09 financial year there were 410,318 self-managed super funds, with a total of 772,300 members.

For those completely spellbound by figures, the complete document and chapter downloads can be found here.