Page 1015 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
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Basically, I do not have much sympathy for the people who are avoiding tax; nor do the Greens have a lot of sympathy for them. By not paying their tax they increase the burden on the rest of us. I have no problems with the revenue office cracking down hard on them. However, I want to focus on the other two categories: people who get a tax debt either because of financial hardship or because of a mistake. These people are not trying to deliberately rip off the government. Instead, they have found themselves in a difficult situation that they need a way out of.
I listened to Mr Coe’s speech on this. I have to say that I share some of his concerns. I have sent quite a number of emails to the Treasurer about various people who, through what would appear to be no real fault of their own, have been in a difficult situation in respect of tax arrears. I would have to say that the current approach has not always been particularly useful and that a different approach is needed. They need to be dealt with sensitively and carefully.
Basically what the revenue office has been doing at present is not right. We need to do this better. That, of course, is one of the reasons that I put forward a motion in November last year that sought to change the revenue office’s practices. That motion was passed—thank you to everybody who voted for it—and I know that that work has now started within the revenue office. They have actually sent out a letter to all the concession ratepayers about deferrals and things that may be available to them.
There are three changes proposed in this amending bill to the Taxation Administration Act for debt recovery. They are: more timely notification to mortgagees about tax debts; recovering tax debts from mortgagees so that they can be rolled into the mortgage; and recovering tax debts from other properties owned by the debtor.
When I first heard about those I thought, “Errrrr!” I don’t quite know how Hansard is going to record that. However, we spent some time thinking about this and talking to the government. It would appear that these are things that actually could be positive for people who find themselves in financial hardship or who have had bad advice, and they are not going to make the situation worse.
Mr Coe: That might be in one per cent of the cases.
MS LE COUTEUR: We still have the issue of the revenue office being a bit more understanding and compassionate. I totally agree with Mr Coe that that has been an issue. All I can say is that this legislation does not create compassion, but it also does not make the situation in any way worse as far as we can see.
My understanding is that these other methodologies, these changes, are only following what has been done in other jurisdictions. We are not leading the way on this; we are simply doing what other jurisdictions have done. Other jurisdictions have found that these are, in many cases, better ways of looking at tax debt recovery. Basically, what we are giving the government the ability to do is to let mortgagees know about tax debts, which could mean that the bank does not extend further credit to someone who actually cannot afford it and who has no chance of paying it back, or rolling a tax debt into a mortgage, which could really help people if they do have a tax debt because mortgages have a lower rate of interest than a tax debt.
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