Tuesday 23 August 2016

Lodged formal complaint with tax office - delays in return, financial hardship

*Update: The complaints person who contacted me was excellent. Two days after first ringing complaints the return was finalised with amount set at repayment. That was last Thursday night. I expect I'll get the money in the bank this week.
 
Well the tax office may have "escalated" me but I've now escalated them in return. Exasperated with talking to their extremely unhelpful drones on the other end of the telephone, I decided to ring their complaints line. I've been told by then that someone will be appointed to resolve my complaint of which I will hear back from them in 3 working days.

Actually the complaints lady I spoke to was very nice and well trained in her area. There were a number of further issues she was interested in too. That I was getting told different things every time I rang them by different people. That it took about 5 phone calls to even be told that the tax office had "escalated" my return. That they didn't contact me at all telling me why my return was delayed and delayed, despite me checking on the My Gov website and ensuring all my contact details were up to date. That the next due by date was tomorrow, the money still not in my account, with no contact from the ATO as to WTF was going on.

To the question how do I want this resolved, I said I just want my return! And I guess for my case to be looked at to see what's gone wrong and something done to address the issues involved.

Said to her I didn't know why they were even investigating me over such a simple return. My taxable earnings were $10,000 (super under financial hardship) and so I get the tax paid on that all back. What could be easier? Said I'd rung and rung, which she noted a number of times in the conversation as she went through the case, and was under financial hardship which was the whole reason for getting the super in the first place.

I also mentioned my bankruptcy, but that the Financial Services Authority had gone through last years return in great detail (where I also took out $10,000 from super) and they sent me a letter saying that I wasn't required to pay anything to the creditor bank after their investigation. 

So it can't be the bankruptcy causing an investigation. There's nothing else that could possibly have gained any concern by the tax drones, so I'm really at a loss as to why the fuck they're doing this? 

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