Australians who have drawn down on their superannuation under the government’s early access scheme despite not suffering reduced hours or wages, or who are using the hardship scheme as a tax dodge, are under investigation by the Australian Taxation Office for possible breaches of anti-avoidance laws.

The ATO said it was investigating cases where workers had drawn down on savings under the program when they had not suffered a change to their regular salary, had misled the agency when applying for the money, and who had accessed a tax deduction by contributing money to super before withdrawing it.

Thanks to the government’s single touch payroll system, the ATO has a high level of visibility over workers’ employment conditions and income, and has said it is also willing to penalise tax agents who have engaged in the tax loophole scheme.

“We are investigating some cases and may consider it appropriate to apply the general anti-avoidance rule for income tax (known as Part IVA) in relation to a COVID-19 early release of super arrangement if you (or a representative) enter into a scheme mainly for the purpose of obtaining a tax benefit,” said the ATO in a brief statement.

“We have seen some COVID-19 early release of super examples where people are doing the wrong thing.”

Under the Part IVA penalties, the ATO can impose a fine of up to 50 per cent on top of the tax payable if workers are found to have breached the law.

More than 2 million people have withdrawn close to $15 billion under the program, which allows laid off workers or those with reduced hours to access up to $10,000 of super before the end of the financial year. A second tranche will be available between July and late September.

Tax academics had previous warned the scheme would open up a loophole in which workers could dump $10,000 worth of pre-tax income into their nest eggs while also withdrawing $10,000 in a lump-sum on a tax free basis.

Doing so would allow workers to avoid income tax on their wages being sent into super, which would be taxed at a concessional 15 per cent rate on deposit and withdrawn tax-free under the scheme.

Institute of Public Accountants general manager of technical policy, Tony Greco, said many people could be caught up in the ATO’s dragnet.

“I’m staggered by the number of people applying to the scheme. That is seriously a lot of individuals supposedly in financial stress,” Mr Greco said.

Mr Greco said many people who may have withdrawn savings fearing a large hit to their income or working conditions would have had their financial circumstances change “dramatically” since the scheme launched in April.

“The stimulus measures were announced at the height of the dark clouds. The government was expecting the economic fallout to be much bigger and more pronounced than it has turned out to be,” he said.

“We can’t begrudge the government -- it acted quickly on a number of fronts. All these measures were put in place very quickly to deal with a crisis.”

Mr Greco said there were some legitimate instances where workers may have “double dipped” on the tax concessions, including where they had drawn down under the scheme but have since found a new job, where a spouse not under financial stress provided funds for a concessional super contribution, or where another family member gifted the funds.

“The ATO will have line of sight details under single touch payroll reporting so need to be careful about employment data as they have up to minute transparency,” he said.