Avoid more stress & stop further ATO recovery action by acting now to get expert help with your tax debt
If you are getting harrassed by the ATO and have received a letter of demand, garnishee notice, director's penalty notice or bankruptcy notice from ATO act now and save your business from forced closure. Our expert tax accountants have helped many small businesses struggling with ATO payment plan and can help you manage your tax debt payment plan and represent your case to ATO and save your livelihood ... your business.
How our expert tax accountants can help you:
6 Reasons Why You Have High ATO Debt!
What Will Happen If You Don’t Take Action?
Not settling ATO Debt can have severe consequences on your business. Including the closure of your business. If you are a company, your debt as a director is not limited.
If the debt is not paid on time, you will be notified by ATO and actions will be taken. By engaging an accountant such as Oyster Hub, we can help negotiate on your behalf with the ATO and ensure that the debt is valid. If it invalid, then a dispute can be raised. Engaging Oyster Hub allows us to negotiate an extension so that we can prepare a case on your behalf.
Directors can incur penalties equal to their company's unpaid PAYG withholding liabilities or superannuation guarantee charge. We may issue a director penalty notice enabling us to start legal proceedings to recover the penalty.
Even without issuing a notice, we can collect the penalty by other means, such as withholding a tax refund.
We can issue a garnishee notice to a person or business that holds money for you, or may hold money for you in the future. This requires them to pay your money directly to us to reduce your debt. We'll send a copy of the notice to you.
For individuals, we may issue a garnishee notice to:
- your employer or contractor
- banks, financial institutions and building societies where you have accounts
- people who owe money to you from the sale of real estate, such as purchasers, real estate agents and solicitors.
For businesses, we may issue a garnishee notice to:
- your financial institution
- trade debtors
- suppliers of merchant card facilities.
If you don't work with us to address your debt, we may file a claim or summons with the relevant court of your state or territory. Once the court has recognised that the debt is owed, we may execute on the judgment debt in a number of ways, including by filing and serving a bankruptcy notice.
If judgment debt interest is also imposed, this amount is not tax deductible.
If you receive a bankruptcy notice, you need to pay your debt or make a payment plan with us within 21 days. If you're unable to do this, we may file a creditor's petition to make you bankrupt. Bankruptcy is a legal declaration that a person is unable to pay their debts. When a person is declared bankrupt, nearly all of their assets are placed with a bankruptcy trustee and then sold to pay the person's debts.
We won't seek to bankrupt you if it is clear you're able to pay your debt in a reasonable time. If you're facing bankruptcy action but believe you can pay your debts, you should provide us with clear evidence of your ability to pay.
You can go into bankruptcy voluntarily by filing a debtor's petition with the Australian Financial Security AuthorityExternal Link.
A creditor's petition is essentially an application to the Federal Court or Federal Magistrates Court for a sequestration order to declare you bankrupt. Anyone you owe money to, including us, can file a creditor's petition if you have committed an 'act of bankruptcy' (such as failing to comply with a bankruptcy notice) within the preceding six months.
If the sequestration order is given, you will become bankrupt and a trustee will be appointed to manage your estate. This usually involves the sale of the bulk of your assets to pay your creditors, including us.
The court will not issue the order if you can demonstrate you're able to immediately pay all of your debts.
When a court orders a company to be wound up, an official liquidator is appointed to sell the company's assets and distribute the resulting funds to the company's creditors.
We'll take action to wind up a company if it has failed to pay its debts and we have not been able to make a suitable payment plan. These circumstances may indicate that the company is insolvent and there could be a risk to us (and possibly to other creditors) that the debt will not be paid if the company is allowed to continue trading.
We conduct audits where we consider a more in-depth examination of the issue is required. Our audit program ranges from relatively quick examinations of source documents to more intensive analysis of complex arrangements and transactions. Whatever the issue, we will be transparent about our concerns. We seek your cooperation so we can complete audits as quickly as possible and give you certainty of your tax and super position.
Most audits are escalated from a review. However, where it is warranted we may proceed straight to audit without conducting a review. This may happen, for example, in cases involving less complex issues, or where we suspect fraud or evasion, or where an arrangement or transaction is considered high risk.
When we contact you in an audit we want to establish a productive and professional working relationship built on transparency. We will be open with you about what has attracted our attention and provide you with an opportunity to disclosure errors and provide information where needed.
We will normally examine source documents to verify the accuracy of financial accounting information and the integrity of access controls within your systems.
Where our discussions with you and our analysis of relevant information are sufficient to address our concerns, we will end our audit and advise you of the outcomes.
Tax laws impose interest charges from the date a tax liability was due to be paid until it and the accrued interest charges are paid. If a debt is increased by an amended assessment, interest charges also apply from the date the original assessment was due to be paid.
This is intended to:
- ensure that taxpayers who have underpaid their tax during this period do not receive an advantage over those who have paid their tax
- compensate the community for the impact of late payments.
Tax and super laws specify a range of criminal offences that apply where taxpayers have not complied with their obligations. Sanctions may apply to both individuals and companies. As for any taxpayer, business taxpayers may be prosecuted for offences such as:
- making a false or misleading statement (including withholding information material to a tax matter)
- keeping incorrect or false records
- refusing or failing to provide a completed return or information, or to produce records or documents
- refusing or failing to attend before a tax officer or answer questions as and when required by a notice from us
- hindering or obstructing a tax officer who is exercising our access powers.
These offences are prosecuted before a court under the authority of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP).
We also investigate, at times with the assistance of other law enforcement agencies, serious criminal breaches under the Criminal Code (such as fraud and money laundering). These matters are prosecuted by the CDPP.