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ATO franking credit crackdown targets fundies, brokers and investors
PUBLISHED: 24 Mar 2014
Thousands of fund managers, stockbrokers and sophisticated investors have been hit with warning letters threatening audits and heavy penalties if they do not confess to over-claiming franking credits on shares. Leading figures within the finance industry are fuming that the Australian Taxation Office believes it can use data matching to trawl back as far as 2010 to compare tax deductions with individual share trading records. “Our information indicates you, or an entity closely associated with you, participated in a franking credit arrangement,” Deputy Commissioner Tim Dyce writes in one of the 3000 letters sent by the ATO. “In this case, two sets of franking credits have been claimed on what is effectively the same parcel of shares.”
Treasurer Joe Hockey announced in November last year that the government would close down a “loophole” which allowed...