The ATO is chasing fraudulent or ineligible claims for COVID-19 measures like JobKeeper and super withdrawal.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) says it is owed hundreds of millions of dollars from people who tried to rort stimulus payments who were declared ineligible or overpaid.

As part of the JobKeeper compliance program alone, the ATO has reviewed hundreds of suspected fraud cases.

The JobKeeper wage subsidy saw almost 3.8 million employees, employed by more than 1 million businesses, receive more than $89 billion in payments.

Additionally, the Serious Financial Crime Taskforce of the Australian Federal Police has launched multiple operations focusing on alleged crimes against the stimulus measures.

Many of these matters are expected to result in criminal charges. 

Meanwhile, the ATO has successfully clawed back about $138 million in fraudulent payments, chasing another $82 million and not pursuing $64 million because it considered they had been “claimed in good faith and passed onto employees”.

The ATO is also reviewing the early release of super, which allowed struggling Australians to pull money out of their superannuation to deal with hardship. 

About 4.55 million applications worth $38 billion were approved by the ATO for over 3 million people.

About 2,800 of these applications were made by people suspected of attempting to defraud the system by using the identity of someone else.

So far, less than 700 individuals have been found to be ineligible for the COVID-19 early release of super scheme.

Of this group, 84 per cent submitted multiple ineligible applications and 16 per cent had at least one application found to be ineligible. 

In another matter, the ATO says some businesses invented wages to get subsidies for their cash flow.

The ATO says it has paused cash flow boost credits for about 29,500 entities while verifying their eligibility.

At least one matter is being investigated for a suspected criminal offence.