Government has enacted legislation to extend the taxable payments reporting system (TPRS) to a further three industries. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Black Economy Taskforce Measures No. 2) Bill 2018 will apply the TPRS regime to the road freight, IT and, security, investigation or surveillance services, from 1 July 2019.

The TPRS aims to improve transparency.  It was first successfully applied to the building and construction industry in 2012, which resulted in the ATO recouping $2.3 billion from the ‘black economy’.  The extension to the three new industries is set to result in a net gain of $545.8 million over four years.

The new law requires entities that provide road freight, IT or security, investigation or surveillance services to report transactions whereby they engage other entities to undertake services on their behalf, for example sub-contractors via an ABN or ACN.

The passage of the bill follows in the footsteps of the cleaning and courier industries, which came under the TPRS regime from 1 July 2018.

It is rumored the Tax Office is extending the reporting of payments into more and more industries and, over time it become more pervasive. It is possible that with improvements in software accounting products and the online economy, in the future all payments to all ABN holders will be reported.