Australian Tax Office forced to apologise for causing ‘unnecessary distress’ after thousands of Australians were sent letters about their historical debts
The Australian Taxation Office has stopped sending out “concerning” letters warning taxpayers about historic debts, in a case that has echoes of the disastrous Robodebt scheme.
In thousands of letters sent to taxpayers and their agents, the ATO has claimed they are owed amounts ranging from a few cents to thousands of dollars and that these amounts will be deducted from future refunds.
The notices have sparked backlash because debts can be decades old and are nearly impossible to confirm because taxpayers are only required to keep records for five years.
Thousands of Australians have unexpectedly received letters from the tax authorities warning them of historic debts
The tax authorities said Tuesday evening that they would not forgive such debts, but that they would take a different approach to communicating them because of the emotional turmoil they caused.
‘Taxpayers can check whether they have a debt on hold by calling us.
“However, we accept that our communications approach has caused unnecessary problems – particularly for debts incurred several years ago,” a spokesperson said. The guard.
“We will review our overall approach to putting debt on hold before moving forward.”
The ATO said the purpose of the letters was to notify people of their debts that had not yet been collected.
Independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie has compared the impersonal sample letters to the Robodebt scheme, which automatically sought to recover alleged ‘overpayments’ from Centrelink and caused widespread distress.
The Australian Taxation Office has admitted the letters have caused people ‘unnecessary distress’
“A government agency issuing guilty pleas without explanation and expecting unconditional compliance sounds suspiciously familiar,” Wilkie said.
In addition to letters sent directly to taxpayers, about 28,000 have been sent to tax agents in recent months, providing them with a list of their clients with outstanding debts.
Following a royal commission into the Robodebt scheme that was devastating to the Morrison government, ministers and bureaucrats involved in the Albanian government have wiped out the debts of almost 200,000 Australians.
The unlawful debt collection scheme started in 2015 and falsely accused benefit recipients of owing money to the government.
More than $750 million was wrongly recovered from 381,000 Australians.
A number of vulnerable people have taken their own lives after feeling mercilessly hounded by the debt recovery system, including Melbourne florist Rhys Cauzzo, 28, after Centrelink wrongly told him he owed $28,000 in 2017.
Independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie compared the tax authorities’ letters to the disastrous Robodebt scheme