The need for greater parliamentary scrutiny of the ATO during the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit's biannual hearings with the Commissioner of Taxation has been foreshadowed in the Committee's report on its eighth biannual hearing with the Commissioner, released on 4 July 2011. Committee Chairman Rob Oakeshott said the Committee intends asking the Tax Commissioner to respond to any concerns detailed by other review agencies (eg the Ombudsman, the Australian National Audit Office and the Inspector-General of Taxation), plus those of industry and consumer groups, at its next public hearing in September 2011.

He added that "integrity in tax administration is a critical foundation block of the Australian taxation system. Whilst evidence suggests in the majority of cases this is done well, the Committee is concerned about the increasing number of complaints about the ATO."

The report has made a number of recommendations aimed at increasing parliamentary scrutiny of the ATO, including:

• that the ATO move to using a traffic light reporting system when reporting publicly on its achievements against benchmarks, in particular its achievements against its service standards;
• that the ATO's next submission to the next biannual hearing should:
  • contain explicit consideration of, and reporting on action taken to improve complaint handling and address the underlying causes of complaints;
  • include a report on compliance activities, specifically action taken to make compliance easier and improve communications;
  • explicitly state and detail actions for the following: (i) areas of improvement since the last hearing; and (ii) planned future improvements.
  • detail the process for developing implementation plans for policy;
  • detail the status of the 900 current cases of compromised TFNs, including actions taken to resolve the issue and reasons for delay, should some remain unresolved; and
  • detail the ATO's responses to recommendations made by external review agencies such as the Australian National Audit Office, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Inspector-General of Taxation
  • that the ATO respond to written reports and recommendations made by external scrutiny bodies in writing.