Wednesday 15 August 2007

No, Mr. Tax Evader Doesn't Live Here!

I get most of my mail sent to a Post Office Box, as it's more secure and rain-proof than our home mailbox. However, I still get the odd bit of mail being delivered to our house, mostly junk mail. Today there was an official-looking envelope in our letter-box which I opened without checking took closely. It turned out that although it was addressed to our street address, it was meant for to a total stranger - let's call him Mr. X.

The letter was a request from the Australian Tax Office for Mr. X to submit his overdue tax returns for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007! My guess is that Mr. X is a tax-evader, and that he deliberately gave an incorrect address when working a 2nd job in order to avoid paying some tax. I know for a fact that Mr. X never lived at this address - we've been at this address for over three years, and the previous owners had lived here for more than twenty years. There's also no Mr. X living close by, so it's not just a case of the house number being incorrect. Tomorrow I'll phone the ATO and let them know that they have the wrong address for Mr. X.

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007


2 comments:

mOOm said...

I'm dealing with the transition from the US to the Australain tax system and trying to set my records up ahead of time. In general is a dividend taxable in Australia in the year you receive the cash or the financial year the dividend is being paid for?

You can e-mail me at moominoid@yahoo.com

Thanks!

enoughwealth@yahoo.com said...

Funnily enough the answer is neither. The dividend payment date is taken as the date you received the income, so it goes into that financial year's tax return. It doesn't matter what period of earnings the dividend relates to.