verging_on_random

I hate the ATO

May 3, 2008 on 9:16 pm | In Uncategorized |

The Australian Tax Office and the system it administers suck.

For years now I have submitted my own tax return, using the eTax online software. I ask for my refund to be deposited direct to my bank account. You would think therefore that it would occur to the ATO that I don’t have much use for snail mail.

But no, yesterday 2 May I collected one of their regular harassing letters from my PO box that I clear about once every 10 days. For whatever reason, they didn’t adopt normal 2008 business practice and send it electronically … they didn’t even have the courtesy to email me and tell me to expect a letter. No, they just sent a letter out of the blue, dated 15 April, telling me if they hadn’t got my response by 29 April I’ll be in deep shit.

Wankers.

The letter queries the work-related expenses that I claimed in 2006/07. I got a similar one a few years ago. It demands that I explain why I believe I am entitled to claim these expenses and detail the evidence I have for the expenditure, giving a space about the size of a postage stamp to respond. The letter is peppered with invitations to admit that I am a fraudulent liar, but if I make a full confession the ATO might graciously reduce the penalties that they inflict on me.

Arseholes.

In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have deliberately understated the deductions that I claim on my tax return for the explicit purpose of avoiding this kind of petty bureaucratic badgering. The whole income tax system is designed to make it hard for ordinary citizens to claim all the deductions to which they are entitled. Every time I fill out a return I am made to feel guilty because I want some of my own money back. Yet the methodology of the ATO is clear: anybody who fails to make a tax agent rich and/or who dares to exceed the absurdly low ‘normal’ limits on work-related expenses will be hassled and harassed until they conform to their preferred practices.

Over the last 15 years I’ve worked as a self-employed consultant and as a casual/contract employee. I paid virtually no tax on my earnings as a consultant; consultants can claim just about anything as a legitimate business expense. If i had had a dog I reckon I could have claimed the Pal Meatybites as a business expense because the dog was guarding the office. Being self-employed in Australia is a formula for freeing yourself of income tax forever.

At all costs, however, avoid doing the same work as a casual employee. As a casual employee you will be expected to drive in your own car to work at various locations - all of which would be legitimate business expenses if you were self-employed - but as far as the ATO is concerned, any claim for work-related use of your private vehicle is highly suspicious. You will be expected to work from home, because the ‘office facilities’ that your employer makes available are appalling or non-existent, but the ATO will want you to produce receipts for every last pencil and printer cartridge. Not only that, but you will be expected to produce detailed logs of your telephone and internet usage to justify a claim that some proportion is work-related. And even though my doctoral studies are funded by FEE-HELP, all details of which are available to the ATO because it has to calculate how much I have to pay back each year, I am still expected to produce documents proving how much I have spent on my doctoral studies.

Fuckwits.

The thing about this which really pisses me off is that permanent employees get all this stuff laid on for free. They don’t have income tax problems. Not only do they get to do all their work on their employer’s telephones and office equipment and internet, they also get to use it for half their private business too. Where I work, permanent workers get their postgraduate fees paid by their employer - it’s only casuals who have been employed for 6 or 7 years on a series of short-term contracts who have to go into debt to pay enrolment fees. So casual workers get hit twice: once by having to fund all this crap themselves instead of getting it as a work perk and again when the ATO comes blundering in officiously hinting strongly that the casual worker is a lying bastard trying to rip off the government.

They really give me the shits.

Of course the long-term objective is the one that Cut’n'Run Peter Costello wanted to achieve … cut out work-related expenses altogether. Give permanent workers yet another tax cut to compensate them for their non-existent losses, and cut out work-related expenses for casuals and contract workers, which at a conservative estimate would cost me at least $4,000 a year. That’s how much I would end up subsidising my various employers by providing office equipment and services used for their purposes when they have to provide the same things to permanent workers at the employer’s expense.

The system stinks. And you know what? I reckon after Kevin’s ‘comprehensive review’ it will stink even more.