“It is pleasing to see that the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Taxation Ombudsman have called out the Australian Taxation Office for their cold-blooded robotax campaign.
“As I’ve said previously, the ATO should have learned from previous reports by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, as well as the Centrelink robodebt scandal, and ensured they avoided unnecessary distress and harm when re-raising these aged debts, many of which had dropped off clients’ online ATO accounts.
“The Government must finally step in and implement urgent changes to the law to introduce time limits on the pursuit of debts, as well as other sensible measures to ensure that people are not facing financial hardship or unnecessary distress from the ATO’s debt collection campaign.”