As I work in an Accounting office, it is essential that I communicate with the the government body known as the Australian Taxation Office. There are always good days and bad days, and worse days, but lately they seemed to have dropped the ball in their service standards.
Lately I have followed up 3 separate clients who have not had their Notices of Assessments released, despite their returns been lodged back in September 2010, and despite numerous follow up phone calls. There was another case where we lodged a return in May 2010, and the client contacted me in August questioning where their refund was. Due the volume of returns we process we rely on the client to contact us if they haven't received their Assessment as there is no way to follow them up without creating a huge new workload and waste time. It took 4 escalations and the lodgement of a complaint before we received the refund, 5 months after the lodgement date.
And today another delay has been realised. Generally twice a year we print a report of all our clients and see who has and has not lodged the current year's return. We went through a listing, current as of 13 January 2011 which shows a tax return as outstanding which we know was lodged in September. Unfortunately, there are various others on the list we know were definitely lodged last year. And we keep getting phone calls following up outstanding debts for entities who are no longer clients, and we have lodged documentation as such.
I would like to know this: exactly how far behind are they in updating their records?
That sounds exactly like our tax office :|
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