The ANF advised newsagents last night that it had met with the ATO re the tax pack mess. There is to be another meeting next week. As long as they are meeting there is hope of a fair outcome for newsagents – but I’m not confident that the ATO cares about fairness for newsagents.
I remain keen to know what the distributor to newsagents got paid. I am also keen to hear the ATO explain why their representatives will say to one person that they have two million tax packs in warehouses yet to the ANF they say they don’t have enough to distribute to newsagents.
The behaviour of the ATO is disgusting. Newsagents are being paid less than a welfare payment to carry a public information burden the ATO should take responsibility for.
Mark – did you see this short article (without pic in the printed version of the newspaper) in today’s Sun-Herald?
http://www.smh.com.au/national/more-taxing-to-get-a-taxpack-20130720-2qay3.html
No, thanks Megan. The thing is, the ATO will not change it’s position despite having tax packs it could send to us.
Two million TaxPacks were printed last year but only 640,000 were lodged. This financial year, 1 million TaxPacks were printed but so far only 47,600 have been requested.
I see this as same old story the distributors where being paid to distribute these by the ATO and a lot of waste happened so there for they have cut out distributing them . i know from my own experience they would send a few boxes and i would never use them all up .
I had an elderly customer in after a tax pack on Friday and and she was dismayed that she could not get one,……
then she told me she liked a copy of what she submitted online. I can understand the need to reduce wastage.
Shaun, I know of people who collected the tax pack and filled it out to hand to their tax agent for entering on the ATO website so the state measures by the ATO is not as helpful as they make it out to be.
The issue here is that they made a fundamental change without engaging in a broad public awareness campaign. They expected us to do this for them for a pittance. No wonder their benchmarks for newsagents are screwed up.
Mark – the Heckler column in today’s Sydney Morning Herald talks about an attempt to source a paper Tax Pack from a newsagency:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/sticky-web-makes-taxes-look-better-on-paper-20130724-2qjjt.html
Ha ha ha Megan, that link made my day !
What’s the bet at 30th October, there are still hundreds of thousands of Tax Packs in a warehouse somewhere, and hundreds of thousands of people who cannot get their tax lodged, and have given up !
Ha Ha Megan! Loved the article!
Nice. It’s a farce though that the ATO treats us so appallingly.
Its hard to lol when I have to answer 5+ PEOPLE asking me why?
I am not calling the ATO I want you to give me One
Ect Ect Ect
Thats Only me and I am not on the counter that much really ATO?