Australians take note!

nisaba

Re Tax Law.

The only money you can accept without being taxed on it is gifts (not in lieu of wages or salary, just birthday gifts or something like that), or one-off winnings, for example a lotto win.

ANY OTHER MONEY, including money earned from hobbies, money earned by children, money earned by healings or fortune-telling, and even money earned by criminal activity, IS TAXABLE, and MUST be declared in your Income Tax Return, under Australian tax law.

For example, when I was working in the Tax office, which I did for many years, a return that crossed my desk showed the guy's occupation as "assassin". He declared large sums for two hits in that financial year. He was taxed on that money. He claimed ammunition, gun club membership, upgraded weaponry, airline tickets, hire cars and hotel accommodation as "expenses necessarily incurred in the earning of his income". They were assessed as being appropriate to the earning of his income, and were granted as deductions.

ALL INCOME, no matter how you earn it, is taxable under Australian law. And you can deduct the costs of your deck purchases (with receipts to prove it), petrol costs (if you read at people's homes) and a percentage of your electricity, water etc, if you have set up a reading-room at home, also in accordance with tax law.

I raise this because of a dialogue between Dancing Bear and myself somewhere in this thread.

Little Hare

beautiful nisaba

I've been looking for information on this!

Am off to read the thread

Edit: Nisaba am i correct in thinking that if i want to do professional reading I have to buy a business number? (ABN)

and ROFLAMO!!! at the assasin....

Alta

I wondered about that when I read the other thread. In Canada a craftsperson said what they made was non-taxable up to a certain point, I forget exactly but it was quite low, you couldn't live on it. But I am sure that if you make even a moderate amount from tarot reading or any other 'non-standard' profession (assassin, wow :bugeyed:

) that any government wants its take.

Lillie

nisaba said:
For example, when I was working in the Tax office, which I did for many years, a return that crossed my desk showed the guy's occupation as "assassin". He declared large sums for two hits in that financial year. He was taxed on that money. He claimed ammunition, gun club membership, upgraded weaponry, airline tickets, hire cars and hotel accommodation as "expenses necessarily incurred in the earning of his income". They were assessed as being appropriate to the earning of his income, and were granted as deductions.

OK. I know, this is a bit of the topic.
But really, you can't just write that and expect me to ignore it.
Can you?

First. Is it really true?
I mean, was he really an assassin, or was he BSing the tax people for some bizarre reason of his own?

And what did you do? Apart from tax him, obviously.
Did you report him?
Call the police?
Call the lunatic asylum?
Or just collect the tax and let him get on with his job?

Possibly that classifies as the weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life.

And I have heard some weird stuff.
Like the mad woman with the police taking her to parallel universes and the invisible cats that lived in her house.
Damn weird cos I could see them just fine.

They tucked her back in the bin soon after...

Allison70

Nisaba, I gotta say, your assassin example is hysterical. But it makes a joke of the tax system if it just got processed like that. I spent years in business worrying about whether I was claiming too much for dunny paper for the shop toilet, when I could have just said I was running an illegal brothel and claimed a dozen pairs of killer high heels each year? I wish you'd told me sooner

nisaba

Little Hare said:
Edit: Nisaba am i correct in thinking that if i want to do professional reading I have to buy a business number? (ABN)

you don 't buy them. You go to the ATO's website and apply online, and you'll have it in a few days, free. Or you can rock up to an actual branch of the Tax Office, but personally I wouldn't bother. They're much easier to deal with on-line - and I used to work there!!

nisaba

Alta said:
I wondered about that when I read the other thread. In Canada a craftsperson said what they made was non-taxable up to a certain point, I forget exactly but it was quite low, you couldn't live on it. But I am sure that if you make even a moderate amount from tarot reading or any other 'non-standard' profession (assassin, wow ) that any government wants its take.

Most countries have a certain tax-free low-income level. If Tarot is your only income, in Australia the amount you earn below that is tax-free no matter what that is: even if you're an investment banker earning millions, the first 14,000 or so per annum is tax-free. I'm assuming that you're either working, in which case you only get that tax-free threshhold once and your Tarot money as your second income is fully taxed; or if you are on government handouts to survive due to unemployment or ill-health, that tax-free threshhold is already taken up with that, and your Tarot income is fully taxed.

Even if it is below that level, it has to be DECLARED on your tax return to be assessed as tax-free, and if you have any other money coming in at all form any source, it probably won't be below that level.

Alta

nisaba said:
Even if it is below that level, it has to be DECLARED on your tax return to be assessed as tax-free, and if you have any other money coming in at all form any source, it probably won't be below that level.

I think what you say would be correct here in Canada as well. Yes, even that below the threshold income would have to be declared. Even students who are getting everything back still have to do the paperwork.

nisaba

Lillie said:
OK. I know, this is a bit of the topic.
But really, you can't just write that and expect me to ignore it.
Can you?

<shrug> I don't like being ignored anyway.

Lillie said:
First. Is it really true?
I mean, was he really an assassin, or was he BSing the tax people for some bizarre reason of his own?

He really was an assassin.

Lillie said:
And what did you do? Apart from tax him, obviously.
Did you report him?

No.

Lillie said:
Call the police?

No.

Lillie said:
Call the lunatic asylum?

No.

Lillie said:
Or just collect the tax and let him get on with his job?

Yes.

The Australian Taxation Office at that stage had legislation guaranteeing all taxpayers complete confidentiality just so long as they obeyed Tax Law. We detected breaches of Tax Law only, not Criminal Law. That was up to police to detect.

In the late 1990s the law changed: all income derived from drug sales or drug trafficking became automatically reportable. All other forms of illegal income were still not reported, and still had the guarantee of confidentiality.

I haven't worked in the Tax Office for several years, so I don't know if they have changed the legislation since then. I suspect they haven't - it took years and caused a great deal of trouble changing it to make drug offenses reportable.

Lillie said:
Possibly that classifies as the weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life.

SECOND-weirdest.

The weirdest happened in the 1980s when I was working there too:

Case one: an immigrant woman on a very low income filled out two copies of a form she legally could only fill out once. It would have saved her $140 tops. I was working in the Defaults section, and had no authority to lose her file. The first pre-prosecution inspection was carried out by a big, burly bloke, who recorded on the paperwork that her excuse was that if she didn't do it, her husband would beat her up. The second pre-prosecution inspection was carried out as a bedside interview in Prince Henry Hospital, Long Bay. The husband had, true to his word, beaten her up. I was forced to send her file through for prosecution anyway.

Case two, the papers crossing my desk on the same day: The Treasurer, the politician at the head of the Taxation Office, who should really set an example. This treasurer at the time was a future prime-minister-to-be, and a millionnaire businessman with many businesses. He did not declare earnings from two of his businesses, saving himself many hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax, while nominally managing the tax system himself. The computer automatically generated the paperwork: I was happy to process his file to prosecution. After all, shouldn't he set an example? No, apparently not. On the same day I was forced to send that poor woman's papers off to the courthouse, Tax Office Bigwigs came and took the treasurer's file off my desk and disappeared it. The media never found out - or were gagged, if they did.

My response? I immediately took the full four weeks' leave owing to me, and spent the first week in a psychiatric unit in tears, frothing at the mouth to whoever would listen (student-doctors and psychiatric registrars, mostly) about how unfair it was, and how I couldn't function in an environment like that.

I am so-o-o glad I escaped. Below-the-breadline poverty beats working there outta hand.

Lillie

nisaba said:
The Australian Taxation Office at that stage had legislation guaranteeing all taxpayers complete confidentiality just so long as they obeyed Tax Law. We detected breaches of Tax Law only, not Criminal Law. That was up to police to detect.

In the late 1990s the law changed: all income derived from drug sales or drug trafficking became automatically reportable. All other forms of illegal income were still not reported, and still had the guarantee of confidentiality.

Good Lord!!!!!
Unreal...

I am utterly gobsmacked.

And in a way you have made my day with this story.
It so appeals to my sense of the ridiculous.

Unlike this one.

SECOND-weirdest.

The weirdest happened in the 1980s when I was working there too:

Case one: an immigrant woman on a very low income filled out two copies of a form she legally could only fill out once. It would have saved her $140 tops. I was working in the Defaults section, and had no authority to lose her file. The first pre-prosecution inspection was carried out by a big, burly bloke, who recorded on the paperwork that her excuse was that if she didn't do it, her husband would beat her up. The second pre-prosecution inspection was carried out as a bedside interview in Prince Henry Hospital, Long Bay. The husband had, true to his word, beaten her up. I was forced to send her file through for prosecution anyway.

Case two, the papers crossing my desk on the same day: The Treasurer, the politician at the head of the Taxation Office, who should really set an example. This treasurer at the time was a future prime-minister-to-be, and a millionnaire businessman with many businesses. He did not declare earnings from two of his businesses, saving himself many hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax, while nominally managing the tax system himself. The computer automatically generated the paperwork: I was happy to process his file to prosecution. After all, shouldn't he set an example? No, apparently not. On the same day I was forced to send that poor woman's papers off to the courthouse, Tax Office Bigwigs came and took the treasurer's file off my desk and disappeared it. The media never found out - or were gagged, if they did.

My response? I immediately took the full four weeks' leave owing to me, and spent the first week in a psychiatric unit in tears, frothing at the mouth to whoever would listen (student-doctors and psychiatric registrars, mostly) about how unfair it was, and how I couldn't function in an environment like that.

I am so-o-o glad I escaped. Below-the-breadline poverty beats working there outta hand.

That's not weird, it's just horrible, sad, tragic and unfair.

Poor woman.

Glad you got out of it!

Australians take note!

nisaba

Little Hare

Alta

Lillie

Allison70

nisaba

nisaba

Alta

nisaba

Lillie