The " Garnishee " Option !

When a branch of the government decides that you owe it money all the power is in the hands of a well oiled apparatus that is unleashed to extract recovery.   It could be the Australian Taxation Office making that claim or it could be Centrelink chasing after an overpayment by way of robo-debt.

You - as a humble taxpayer - are confronted with a monolith prepared to go to court with a phalanx of costly lawyers to which both time and money are not options.   The courts are mostly over awed by the sheer power of the Commonwealth and in most cases the onus is on the taxpayer to prove that they do not owe that claimed money.

In the majority of cases the relevant department threatens court action but takes recovery action before it proceeds to a hearing stage.  It has the power to intercede and redirect your taxation refund to its own coffers or to take money from your bank account without prior warning.  When this involves a small business it is often the withdrawal of what was " working capital " that causes it to close its doors.

There is another option that government agencies are starting to use and that is the " garnishee " applied to drawing a weekly repayment stipend from the debtors wages.  This was an option once applied in an earlier century and has lately been revived.  When a garnishee is served on a debtors employer a nominated amount is withheld weekly from the pay  packet and  paid to the claimant.

All this came under the focus of an enquiry spotlight after a taxation department employee faces life in prison for disclosing details of tax office debt collection methods.  Millions of dollars have been re
directed from the bank accounts of claimed debtors and garnishees are being used to extract funds from those with negative bank balances.

The Australian tax office claims that this is all a result of a " misunderstanding " , caused by " miscommunication " about the use of enduring garnishees - and this has now been corrected.  All this arose from a joint enquiry held by the Sydney Morning Herald and Four Corners, which disclosed that the tax ombudsman was virtually powerless to protect whistleblowers who disclose wrongdoings.

A Griffith University professor of public policy and law has called for legislation  to protect whistleblowers  be completely overhauled  at a separate Senate enquiry into press freedom.   He said protection for public officials who disclose  official information on suspected wrongdoing is inadequate.

The " deafening silence " in this enquiry is the outcome that will be taken against that tax department employee who disclosed to the public wrongdoing in the way debts were being recovered.  This virtual " public service " looks like being rewarded with many years in a prison cell  !