iscoverThe ATO has released its corporate plan for the 2025–26 financial year, outlining its five top priorities for the financial year ahead.
Fraud, tax debts, digitalisation top the ATO’s 2025–26 priority list
11 August 2025
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8 minute read
Among the ATO’s top priorities for 2025–26 are boosting compliance and collecting debt, delivering a digitalised tax experience for small businesses and cracking down on fraud.
“Our corporate plan is our primary planning document, but it’s so much more than that. It outlines how we’ll meet our commitments to government, and the expectation of the community, in the coming year,” Commissioner Rob Heferen said.
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“Simply put, our primary focus as the nation’s principal tax collector is ensuring that all taxpayers, both large and small, meet their obligations. This is very much what the government and community expects of us, and so it’s appropriate that its where we keep our focus.”
The ATO’s top five priorities for FY26 included:
- Strengthening payment performance and tax debt collection.
- Identifying and preventing fraud.
- Establishing payday super.
- Digitalising the tax experience for small businesses.
- Implementing recommendations from the APS’ capability review of the ATO.
The ATO said it would continue its crackdown on tax debt collection through firmer actions and stronger messaging.
“While over 90% of tax is paid on time, since 2020 we have seen increased debt levels, with many taxpayers experiencing difficulty getting on top of their payment obligations,” it noted.
It said it would continue to levy strong actions for non-payment of tax, including director penalty notices, garnishee action and bankruptcy action, to send a clear message regarding the consequences of deliberately not paying tax.
Fraud is also in the ATO’s focus, bolstered by increased funding for its Counter Fraud Program.
“Fraud and serious organised crime is on the increase, fuelled by advancements in technology and digital services, data breaches and fraudsters who can rapidly evolve their tactics and ways of infiltrating the tax system,” it said.
The Tax Office pledged to deploy more advanced controls, including real-time monitoring capabilities to prevent fraudulent refunds being processed, increased secure messaging, and to enhance their app to allow taxpayers to easily distinguish between a genuine ATO contact and imitation scam calls.
This commitment came soon after a Four Corners investigation revealed that large-scale GST fraud had led to a total of $2 billion in taxpayer funds being stolen from the ATO.
Thirdly, the Tax Office said it would focus on establishing the payday super system once the legislation was passed.
It said the payday super program would build a fairer and more efficient super system by ensuring timely payments, and reposition superannuation as a natural part of employees’ pay entitlements.
“We are progressing administrative design, planning and preparation activities for implementation of this reform,” the ATO said.
The ATO also said it would focus on delivering a more streamlined, digitalised tax experience for small businesses in a bid to shrink the small business income tax gap, which it found was primarily driven by honest mistakes, poor record keeping and opportunistic behaviour.
“Collectable debt in Australia is more than $50 billion, of which two-thirds owed relates to small business,” it noted.
Lastly, the ATO said it would implement recommendations from the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC)’s Capability Review of the Australian Taxation Office.
These included better aligning resourcing with strategic directions and strengthening decision-making, including appropriate engagement with risk, boosting collaboration and addressing key technology irritants to better equip ATO staff.
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