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Reconcile an aggregate against Commonwealth budget totals

Source: R/reconcile.R
ato_reconcile.Rd

Compares a scalar (or data frame total) against the published Final Budget Outcome figure for the same year and revenue line. Useful as a sanity check on an ATO Taxation Statistics sum before reporting it in a paper or brief.

Usage

ato_reconcile(value, year, measure, sum_column = NULL)

Arguments

value

Numeric; the figure to check, in AUD (not AUD billions). An ato_tbl can also be passed: pass sum_column to pick which numeric column to sum.

year

Financial year, e.g. "2022-23".

measure

One of the measure codes in ato_crosswalk("budget"), for example "individuals_income_tax_net", "company_tax_net", "gst_net", "fuel_excise_net".

sum_column

Column name to sum when value is a data frame. Default NULL (errors if multiple numeric columns exist).

Value

A one-row data frame: measure, year, value_aud, reference_aud, diff_aud, pct_diff, source. Emits a warning if abs(pct_diff) > 0.05.

Details

Discrepancies between ATO Taxation Statistics aggregates and the Final Budget Outcome (FBO) are expected and meaningful:

  • Taxation Statistics are based on assessments made by a cut-off date (usually October of the following calendar year) and may exclude late-lodging returns.

  • FBO figures are cash-basis Commonwealth receipts; Taxation Statistics are accrual-basis tax assessed.

  • GST, excise, and fuel credits have timing and refund effects that further distort the cash-vs-assessment gap.

A 1-3 per cent gap is consistent with the accrual-to-cash reconciliation Treasury publishes in the FBO statement of revenues; larger gaps warrant investigation. The bundled reference totals in inst/extdata/budget_reference_totals.csv are taken from the relevant FBO release, with the precise table cited in the source column of each row.

References

Commonwealth of Australia (various years). Final Budget Outcome. The Treasury, Canberra. https://budget.gov.au/content/fbo/index.htm

Australian Bureau of Statistics (various years). Taxation Revenue, Australia. Catalogue 5506.0.

Australian Taxation Office (annual). Australian tax gaps – overview, methodology notes on accrual-vs-cash reconciliation.

See also

Other harmonisation: ato_crosswalk(), ato_deflate(), ato_harmonise(), ato_per_capita(), ato_schema_map(), ato_to_taxstats()

Examples

ato_reconcile(value = 316.4e9,
              year = "2022-23",
              measure = "individuals_income_tax_net")
#>                      measure    year value_aud reference_aud diff_aud pct_diff
#> 1 individuals_income_tax_net 2022-23 3.164e+11     3.164e+11        0        0
#>                                   source
#> 1 Final Budget Outcome 2022-23 Table 4.2