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Responding to a tax audit request
Hi everyone,
My sister in-law is getting harassed by the ATO for the second consecutive year.
She received a letter requesting an audit despite the ATO completing her tax return and receiving the Notice of Assessment in December, after waiting two months.
In the 2022-23 financial year, she was flagged for an audit and after we responded claiming she was a living woman, she had her deductions reduced to $0 and received a penalty amounting to around $7,000.
She paid the penalty as she was a little bit scared about it all, and hoped to close the matter.
The scoundrels sent her a letter last December requesting a formal interview to answer to her case for the 2022-23 financial year. We declined the interview request stating she paid the penalty despite not agreeing that she made “recklessly misleading and false claims”.
To prepare her better for the future, we set her up an ABN to do some side gigs since the start of 2024. Then we kept many receipts to back up the deductions she made for the most recent financial year.
We are prepared to undergo the audit, but decided to put a hurdle for them to jump over.
Here is the letter we draft.
Would love to hear your thoughts and whether others faced a similar situation and how it turned out for them.
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2 Replies
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if she has all her receipts in order and has nothing else to fear from the audit, why not just proceed with it and get it out of the way. If you have evidence of all expenses etc then surely there is nothing to fear. If you send notices it starts up a whole new process and gives you a whole lot of potential work to do to hold your position and it sounds like your sister does not like to do that.
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That’s a good point. I guess for her sake, she can just go through the audit.
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