Page 3424 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 11 October 1994
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The reasons stated for the time increase are that the commissioner has only two or three inspectors to do self-assessment checks on taxpayers, and in any case the Act already requires taxpayers to keep records for six years. The Government puts these two items together and decides to make taxpayers sweat it out for six years, wondering whether they are going to be confronted with an amended assessment. This thinking opens up some convoluted possibilities. Will the threat of an amended assessment at any time in the next six years strengthen taxpayers' resolve to submit complete and accurate returns? I doubt that it will make any difference. Will the longer time lull the commissioner into a sense of security and restrain him from getting more inspectors? The Minister said nothing about either of these matters in her presentation speech, and I would find her answers interesting.
Whatever those answers may be, paragraph 5(a) adds to the confusion in another direction. Earlier, I queried whether the Commonwealth having done something grossly at odds with a basic tenet of our justice system is sufficient justification for the Territory to do the same. In paragraph 5(a), however, the argument is a little different. This Bill proposes a six-year window for amending assessments. The Commonwealth Income Tax Assessment Act, at section 170, provides only four years for the same matter. If the Commonwealth needs more time, it has to apply to the Federal Court. Our Bill, however, contains no comparable provision, which seems to me to be a shortcoming, because it amends the law providing for proper collection of Territory revenue. The Government is asserting its independence, quite unconcerned for the confusion and potential for unintended breaches and even the injustices that will flow from the Territory having a different period from that which the Commonwealth provides. It will lead to confusion and it is unnecessary. If four years is a long enough period for the Commonwealth to determine whether it wants to issue an amended assessment, then it ought to be long enough for us.
Paragraph 5(b) gives the commissioner an open-ended power to follow up on suspected - not established, but suspected - cases of fraud, evasion or omission of material facts from a return. In her speech, the Minister did not even try to offer a justification for this. "Let us pursue those who try to deprive the Territory of its rightful dues until hell freezes over" is perhaps a worthy sentiment; but it says little about a piece of administrative machinery that takes until hell is decidedly cool to discover the need to set off on that pursuit. The system already requires taxpayers to keep records for six years after finalising the assessment based on them, in case the commissioner needs to examine them. Is it going to take the commissioner six years to discover that the taxpayer has been ripping off the Territory? I hope not. The solution to both of the matters that clause 5 seeks to address is simply to give the commissioner enough resources to find out, within four years, whether a taxpayer has been attempting a rip-off. Surely, this is far preferable to the imposition, by stealthy implication, of a requirement on all taxpayers to keep records for longer than the statutory six years, just in case the commissioner wants to put them to the torture after seven, eight or nine years.
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