The Australian Taxation Office has allowed eight staff members who were caught inappropriately snooping on innocent Australian taxpayers to resign instead of facing formal charges.

Last November the ATO issued a press release reassuring the community that it protects the personal information of Australia’s 11 million individual and 2.5 million business taxpayers.

This was after the ATO admitted to 27 staff members making unauthorised access to taxpayers’ records last financial year. The press release said: “We acted quickly and decisively to deal with these breaches – 12 resigned during the course of investigations of which four were referred for prosecution, four were dismissed and 11 were subject to other action such as demotion or salary reduction.”

Smelling a rat, former shadow Assistant Treasurer (now shadow Defence Minister), Joel Fitzgibbon, placed a question on notice to the Assistant Treasurer Peter Dutton:

Fitzgibbon: In respect of 27 Australian Taxation Office (ATO) staff who admitted last year to inappropriately accessing taxpayer records, did the ATO permit 12 of the staff to resign on the spot, instead of prosecuting them for serious breaches of privacy?

Dutton: Twelve employees exercised their common law right to resign from the ATO during the course of investigations. Formal prosecution of these matters is a decision for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

Dutton is right, of course, that the DPP makes the decision to prosecute someone. The only problem is the ATO only referred four of the 12 resignation cases to them for prosecution and allowed eight of them to resign their positions and not face formal charges. The DPP never saw the cases. Welcome to the protection of taxpayer information: Michael D’Ascenzo style!

While the ATO seeks to ensure the community that some of the unauthorised accesses are simply innocent, there are a large number that have a darker side. I recall the auditor whose wife had left him and shacked up with a much younger man. In a rage of jealousy he accessed the toy boy’s personal tax information and discovered he had one tax return outstanding as well as discovering where he and the departed wife lived.

The auditor arranged a colleague to doorknock the next day. The colleague heavied the young man saying the ATO was going to prosecute him for not lodging his tax return. The toy boy explained: “But I’m expecting a refund!”

The scorned auditor was prosecuted but his colleague remained in his job with just a rap over the knuckles. And be careful in traffic that you don’t cut in front of a tax auditor who has had a long day at the office. Many auditors check with their motor vehicle state registration body to identify the person to establish if the dodgy driver has any tax foibles.