(Image: Getty)

One of the largest aspects of the budget — and the most surprising — is the amount of extra revenue the government expects to be able to gain by cracking down on the black economy.

It is expecting to gain an astonishing $6 billion over the next four years by flushing out illegal activity and getting them to pay tax. This is all part of a “Black Economy Package” that includes the famous war on “chop-chop”.

Chop-chop, for those who don’t frequent dodgy milk bars, is the name given to illegal tobacco. The government is going all out in its war on illegal smokes, with a Border Force Strike Team and funding for the ATO to destroy illegal tobacco crops.

(If you’re imagining Toyota Corollas full of tax office boffins driving out to the tobacco fields and torching them, so am I. I?d like them to make a TV show out of that.)

The war on chop-chop also involves a measure that probably should have been made a long time ago. Importers will, from July 1, 2019, have to pay tax on their ciggies when they come into the warehouse, not later when they sell them. You won’t be surprised to learn that those importers suffered just awful levels of losses from the warehouses, but now the nefarious person or persons facilitating those losses will be discouraged too.

(Importantly — this part of the war on chop-chop also helps the revenue lump look larger in the budget papers, because it means some revenue arrives earlier than it would have. Tobacco normally sits in warehouses for 12 weeks, and so an extra 12 weeks of tobacco excise is pulled forward into 2019-20, worth perhaps $2.5 billion. That’s simply marks a change in the time this revenue will arrive and represents a big chunk of the $6 billion this package purports to raise.)

A cast of villains

The government will also crack down on a range of shady operators, including security providers, investigation services, road freight transport and computer system designers. Wait, who? Yes, apparently computer system designers are in the top few industries who tend to lean to the dodgy side. People are apparently buying server set-ups with envelopes full of cash.

“Contractors in these industries have been identified by the ATO as being at higher risk of not complying with their tax obligations,” says Budget Paper 2, and it is expected to eventually raise $300 million a year in net extra revenue.

A big part of the black economy crack-down is encouraging dobbing. Aussies will be offered a “Black Economy hotline” to dob in a dodgy tradie or a pub paying cash to their dishwasher. This, along with extra ATO mobile strike teams (perhaps those same boffins are going into combat now?), better analytics and a few more items, will raise $3 billion over the next few years.

A final, and especially fascinating strand of the black economy crack-down is a ban on cash payments over $10,000. “Currently, large undocumented cash payments can be used to avoid tax or to launder money from criminal activity,” the budget points out. Which is doubtless true. But precisely how the government intends to find all these deliberately dodgy cash transactions remains something of a mystery.