Privately owned and wealthy groups play a significant role in the Australian economy, tax and superannuation systems. The ATO emphasises that the community expects large private groups and high-wealth taxpayers to pay the correct amount of tax, and that they generally have access to sufficient resources to satisfy their tax-and-super obligations. The ATO’s programs for these groups are built around risk-assessment, data intelligence and targeted assurance activities.
On 22 September 2025, the ATO outlined its key focus area’s for privately owned wealthy groups for the 2025 and 2026 income years. The ATO publicises its programs and areas of focus to prompt taxpayers to recognise and manage potential risks and increase voluntary compliance. For private groups, this provides an opportunity to review governance frameworks, confirm the robustness of tax positions, and prepare for future engagement with the ATO.
What behaviours, characteristics and tax issues attract the ATO’s attention
According to the ATO, the following behaviours or conditions may attract their attention:
- Non-lodgement of returns or activity statements, or delayed lodgement/payment.
- Use of complex or opaque structures where ownership, control or benefit flows are not clear.
- International transactions, cross-border activities, and arrangements with associated parties overseas that may result in non-reporting or incorrect reporting.
- Use of trusts, distributions outside defined family groups, inappropriate benefit extractions, and weaknesses in governance or documentation around these arrangements.
- Use of private companies to extract wealth (for example via loans, use of company assets for personal benefit) in a way that avoids appropriate tax treatment.
- Succession-planning, asset transfers, restructures and exits (particularly in groups with ageing owners or families passing control) that may trigger tax issues.
- Industry-specific risk areas (for example property & construction, private equity, retail, cross-border investment) where tax leakage or mistreatment is more common.
Key risk-areas for 2025-26
From the ATO’s update, these are some of the major focus areas:
- Core tax and compliance issues - The ATO frequently observe risks and issues that have arisen due to inadequate governance, internal controls or lack of professional advice such as
- Failing to adequately register for obligations.
- Non-lodgement, incomplete lodgements or late lodgements of obligations.
- Failing to meet tax liabilities when due.
- Capital Gains Tax (CGT) – Access to concessions, exemptions or rollovers that may result in capital gains being reduced, disregarded or deferred such as:
- Inappropriately applying the CGT discount.
- Inappropriately claiming the small business CGT concessions.
- Incorrect assessment of pre-CGT status of assets.
- Restructuring to access concessions not otherwise eligible for.
- Trusts and higher risk related arrangements – ATO attention will be placed on trusts, particularly where:
- distributions are made to non-family-group members (which may trigger Family Trust Distribution Tax) or to lower taxed beneficiaries where the economic benefits flow elsewhere.
- circular distributions.
- incorrect assessment of 45-day holding rule.
- Private company benefit extraction - Use of private-company funds or assets for personal use or private pursuits are under scrutiny including:
- unreported loans to shareholders.
- no or inadequate records.
- failing to make minimum yearly repayments or making them via circular or back-to-back loans.
- failing to recognise Division 7A applies.
- claiming deductions or offsets that the taxpayer may not be entitled to.
- Succession planning and wealth transfers – Events such as business exits, family wealth transfers, restructures or change of control trigger higher risk including:
- Asset movements around a group.
- Accessing of exemptions, concessions and rollovers.
- Settlement of Division 7A loans.
- Use of trusts to transfer wealth.
Key Industries and activities in focus
- Property and construction – the ATO continues to focus on private groups operating in the property and construction industry that have a higher risk of misclassifying their real property transactions due to misunderstanding or disregarding the law. This includes:
- how income is classified (capital vs revenue).
- GST/margin scheme issues.
- Non-arm’s length intra-group dealings.
- Private Equity – in recognition of the growing size and scale of private capital investment in Australia, the ATO will focus on all stages of the private equity investment lifecycle i.e. pre-acquisition, acquisition, holding, pre-exit and exit.
- Retail – Largely GST reporting errors will be the focus for the ATO including:
- Omissions of income from sales.
- Intra-group transactions.
- Misclassification of sales and warranty payments.
- Claiming input tax credits for non-creditable transactions.
- International transactions – Cross-border transactions, associated party dealings overseas, compliance with foreign-related obligations (e.g., controlled foreign companies) increasingly draw ATO attention.
- Crypto assets – the ATO will use data-matching to make sure crypto asset transactions are reported correctly and will focus on:
- crypto asset investors omitting or incorrectly reporting capital gains or losses from crypto transactions.
- crypto asset businesses omitting or incorrectly reporting income and expenses.
- GST refund fraud – arrangements designed to improperly obtain GST refunds will generally involve the manipulation of structures, reporting, timing, or non-payment of GST obligations, and may include either:
- false or exaggerated invoicing.
- mismatched accounting methods.
- the appearance of high-value transactions where no genuine economic activity has occurred.
Bottom line
As groups expand or evolve their business and investment strategies, their approach to identifying and managing tax risks should also evolve. The ATO has clearly signaled, privately owned and wealthy groups are on notice. Any group with exposure to any of these areas of focus should review their tax-governance frameworks, contemporaneously document key decision-making, maintain timely lodgement/payment cycles, and seek professional advice sooner rather than later. If you are concerned about your tax or GST obligations or positions, contact your local Moore Australia office.