Thu 16 June 2005 - No more Mr Nice Guy
The ATO isn’t playing nice anymore. Okay, so I admit I haven’t been sending in their infuriatingly frequent monthly forms on time.
(When the government introduced GST, they trumpeted it would be a simpler tax system. What they meant was simpler for them. Not so simple if you’re one of the Cursed who now has to fill in a form every month.)
So far I’ve got away with the late forms, the only result being a terse note along the lines of “This time we’ve decided not to fine your arse. This time.”
But now they have cracked it and… well, fined my arse. $220 no less. $110 per 28 day period (or part thereof).
This month’s damn form is going in a week early.
June 16th, 2005 at 10:44am
OUCH!!
June 16th, 2005 at 12:36pm
*wince* They smack it where it hurts, don’t they?
June 16th, 2005 at 6:56pm
Sorry Daniel, bit of a threadjack, but the BBC has just ordered a third series of Doctor Who!
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1507679,00.html
June 16th, 2005 at 6:58pm
Sorry, I should have warned everybody that the link I posted above does contain serious spoilers for the last episode, remove it if you feel it appropriate Daniel.
June 16th, 2005 at 7:52pm
The ATO. Grrrrrrrrr. They sent letters to an old PO Box last year, 3 of them all would have been sent back. They didn’t call me (my phone number hasn’t changed) to see what was going on, just decided to lump me with a general interest charge instead. I thought my accountant had changed my address on my behalf as they had been sending me other correspondence from the ATO. Grrrrrrrrrrr again.
June 16th, 2005 at 10:20pm
Monthly forms? Ouch. I thought yearly was bad enough.
June 16th, 2005 at 11:07pm
Andy, it’s ‘cos I have a company that I contract through. Thankfully normal everyday citizens don’t have to put up with such pen pushing. But until a couple of years ago, the forms were quarterly.
Thanks for the warning Pete… I won’t read it yet!
June 16th, 2005 at 11:58pm
Hi Daniel. I am just curious as to how long this form takes to fill in? We hear from small business that they are snowed under with government red tape.
June 17th, 2005 at 7:34am
There’s a quick form (IAS) 2 out of every 3 months, which takes less than half an hour to do manually (would be quicker if all your accounting was done in a package like MYOB or Quicken, but I’ve never taken the time to organise it). There’s a more complex form every 3 months (the dreaded BAS) which takes at several times as long.
I suppose the amount of time taken isn’t huge, but it is a hassle to find all the relevant data every month.