“The ATO would not relent. Here they were, flat chat on a Sunday! After scores of questions about my identity, their issue was something about my BAS in 2023 and whether I had recently ‘authorised’ a change to it.” Columnist ROBERT MACKLIN suspects he’s been drawn into a scam, but isn’t sure how.
Last week the scammers who swiped more than $2 billion from the ATO cost me an entire morning’s writing.
In fact, over the last couple of years it almost cost me the friendship of my son Ben, without which life would not be worth living.
For those who missed the ABC Four Corners episode, the massive attack on the ATO took place through a loophole connected with BAS and the ATO’s GST refund (There’s a GST refund? Who knew?).
Please don’t ask me for details since anything called “Tax” and starts with a dollar sign ($) turns my brain into jelly. So when I get a phone call from someone saying they’re from the tax office and want to discuss my “identity”, I immediately hang up. And if they send an official-looking email I immediately delete it.
The reason is simple. I used to be a trusting chap and several times my kindly view of my fellow humans nearly got me into terrible trouble. My son Ben saved me, just in time, from being one of those sad sacks on TV regretting the loss of their life savings.
Thereafter, anything that looked vaguely suspicious had me on the line to Ben who is holding down an important job in the APS. And these days they come so thick and fast that I was becoming an impediment to the productivity that Ben was trying to improve across our entire trading nation.
He’d usually end our phone call with a sigh of regret at my malaprop explanation with: “Okay, send it to me and I’ll have a look at it”.
After a while I felt so badly about my interruptions to national progress – and my formerly respectable fatherly image – that I just killed every attempt to reach me, including the fair dinkum ones.
In this case, however, the ATO would not relent. Here they were, flat chat on a Sunday! After scores of questions about my identity, their issue was something about my BAS in 2023 and whether I had recently “authorised” a change to it.
I said my accountant would have done it, if anyone did it. But did I authorise it? “Well, since he’s my accountant I guess that’s what he’s authorised by me to do… whatever it is.
Referred to a special taskforce
“But did I specifically authorise it? I’m sorry, I can’t remember. And it’s so long in the past – 2023 – that I don’t understand why you’re bringing it up now.”
“That’s all right,” said the very patient Filipina, “we’ll refer it to a special taskforce who will investigate it. And we’ll make sure to protect you.”
Well, that was very good of them. I was rather chuffed that my identity had attracted a “special taskforce”.
It was not until the next morning that I discovered the Four Corners story to be on that night. Goodness knows what connected me to those smart-alecs who, we’re told, took advantage of the GST “loophole”.
It was started, it seems, by a recently released jailbird in 2021 named Linden Phillips. When he arrived home in Mildura he immediately tried on the scam and the ATO fell for it.
Then he seems to have spread it around the town and the smart-alecs jumped on board. All up, it seems, some 57,000 people were involved in it, and the ATO has only recovered $96 million. No wonder they’ve got a special taskforce on the job.
I talked it over with Ben. One of his degrees is the Law of the Internet. It had occurred to me that once the boffins produce the Quantum computer that would bring an end to scamming. Alas, not so.
“They will democratise it,” he said. “Then it will be a race to see who can scam it.” Here we go again. Same old, same old… humanity.
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