Making theft legal between 2003 and 2025

As you would have heard, the Government had a rush on trying to pass 40 Bills in Parliament yesterday at its last sitting for the 2024 year.

One of these bills involved stopping surcharges on ATO payments after it emerged that taxpayers were illegally charged fees by Commonwealth agencies for decades. These fees are estimated to be in the billions and date back to the Howard era.

In a statement on Friday, the government confirmed the ATO and Services Australia would stop charging merchant fees on debit card payments from 1 January 2025. The ATO currently charges a 0.4 per cent fee on Visa debit transactions and 0.2 per cent on Mastercard debit payments.

The practice was discovered by the government when NSW authorities revealed in October their state agencies had been unlawfully collecting similar charges. The Government has since received legal advice which confirmed Commonwealth laws prohibited the government from charging anyone when they paid taxes or fees.

To address the issue, the government said it would introduce the Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024 this week (28 November 2024).

In true Government style the legislation would apply retrospectively from 1 January 2003, effectively legitimising two decades of surcharge collection, while at the same time banning the practice of passing them onto taxpayers. Effectively this has made the illegal practice that started back in 2003 legal, and at the same time prohibiting the practice in the future. I’m sure this is akin to being able to rob someone legally as long as it happened between 2003 to 2025?

There are currently no plans for refunds due to the challenges of auditing the fees across government services over many years.

 

Author

Kim Jay