The Australian Taxation Office has been requiring eBay to provide information on its users for years now. eBay actually emails you and lets you know what data they've provided to the ATO. Any Australian trying to make "a bit on the side" who doesn't take into account the fact that the ATO and Centrelink have one of the world's most sophisticated data matching programmes is an idiot. Some of these idiots are going to end up getting slapped with a tax bill as well as debt recovery action by Centrelink.
Here's what the eBay emails said a few years ago.
Hello EBAYID,
eBay has received a request from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for information relating to members of
www.ebay.com.au who had sales greater than AU $20,000 in any given year during the period 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2009.
Our records reflect that you had sales greater than AU $20,000 in at least one of these financial years. As a result, the ATO has requested the following information:
•Contact name and user ID
•Email Address and IP Address
•Company /Business Number and ABN
•Address
•Telephone numbers
•Date of Birth
•Registration Date
•Banking Account Details
•Monthly sales for the period 1 July 2007 – 30 June 2009
We can confirm that eBay has and will continue to work with the ATO to provide them with the information we are legally required to provide. Disclosure of this information is permitted in accordance with our Privacy Policy. eBay will be the ones to provide this information to the ATO.
For further information regarding the ATO, please visit its website at
www.ato.gov.au, or consult with your professional legal or tax adviser.
Sincerely,
The eBay Team
For the non-Aussies, the people being caught by this measure could range from unemployed youth whose only other source of income if $250 per fortnight government income support to families earning $90,000 per annum who've been overpaid child care benefit/rebate and family tax benefit because they didn't include the eBay income in their family income estimate. It will be interesting to see who they choose to prosecute.
