TRS Checking with Business for Authenticity

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customs.gov.au

• 

  Ocker on 15/06/2023 - 11:47

  +2

  And the downside if you are caught attempting to defraud the ATO is?????

  • 

    rynnethia on 15/06/2023 - 12:04

    Oh, fully understand that this is definitely a possibility, but the fact that there's a few people in OzB who's casually said to just do it makes me think they've done it and hasn't gotten caught, which boggles me because surely the ATO actually tries to check this when they're literally handing money out to people?

• 

  hyouden on 15/06/2023 - 11:52

  +1

  You feeling lucky? :)

• 

  Pcosmic on 15/06/2023 - 12:02

  +1

  Small change. Just do it

• 

  CyberMurning on 15/06/2023 - 12:05

  i dont think they check … another loopholes from many that we already have in this beloved country. maybe for $11k diamond ring, but for $2000 camera ?

  maybe we need ahuang to come and tell us if his shop need to confirm every single TRS lodged by ozb
  @ahuang

• 

  payless69 on 15/06/2023 - 12:22

  +1

  Just a joint under your bra and the Bali Hilton is free!

• 

  mskeggs on 15/06/2023 - 12:27

  +5

  LOL, the headlines just write themselves:
  Dateline SMH 2024
  Customs Data Matching Project Leads to Jail for 17 Internet Website Members

  Australian Customs has secured the first jail sentences for fraud following a review of the Tourist Refund Scheme.
  Department Director said "Our new graduate program ran a historical data matching project that showed 6% of the TRS claims had errors, overwhelmingly in favour of the traveler. We have so far data matched 2022 and 2023 historical records and are prosecuting any travelers with false declarations on more than one occasion."
  Government spokesperson said "While the amounts were typically less than a few hundred dollars, the repeated nature of the fraudulent behavior left us no option but to seek criminal conviction and jail time for the perpetrators"
  "Members of the wider community, and particularly those seeing online posts that it is something everyone is doing, need to understand fraud against the Commonwealth has extremely severe penalties because it is theft from the whole community."
  The prosecution stated that while the maximum prison sentence was 10 years for each occurence, they had recommended 6 months incarceration and a suspended sentence for those pleading guilty.

  • 

    Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 15/06/2023 - 18:25

    +1

    So we can steal just once from the ATO without issue? Nice.

• 

  JimmyF on 15/06/2023 - 13:28

  Looking through some of the comments, it seems like a few people are actually editing their tax invoices so it perfectly matches what the tax invoice requirements are. While it's likely illegal to do it

  Highly illegal to edit the tax invoice. But what are the editing? That TRS requirement is not on the invoice.

  Doesn't seem like there's anything stopping people from editing invoices to slightly inflate the RRPs and get even more GST back

  Nothing at all until they randomly check someone to find out its a fake invoice and everything else that follows with that.

  • 

    rynnethia on 15/06/2023 - 14:08

    I don't remember which forum post it was (I'm sure I could find it if I check again) but there's a few topics of people getting the wrong name, or mismatched shipping and billing address and 1-2 commenters saying to just edit or blank it out.

    Seems like the general consensus here is they don't usually check it unless it's a high value item or if you're unlucky. Feels like for such a highly-exploited program they should've come up with a way to check for authenticity ages ago. :/

    • 

      JimmyF on 15/06/2023 - 15:22

      but there's a few topics of people getting the wrong name, or mismatched shipping and billing address and 1-2 commenters saying to just edit or blank it out.

      These would be grey edits, fixing an incorrect or address in my books would be ok to a point, as long as you're not changing the name to someone elses, but inflating the price is a no no.

      • 

        rynnethia on 15/06/2023 - 16:26

        I don't think anyone is disagreeing that it's not a no no, it's more just that the lack of diligence for this program seems lower than I'd expect. 😬

        • 

          JimmyF on 16/06/2023 - 10:36

          @rynnethia:

          it's more just that the lack of diligence for this program seems lower than I'd expect. 😬

          Doesn't make it right though.

• 

  jammy2006 on 15/06/2023 - 14:01

  +2

  They certainly do check some invoices thoroughly, though likely not for small amounts due to the effort involved. The last audit from 2019 notes forgery in section 3.35 among other areas of issue.

  The appendix in said report has some amusing case studies.

  In May 2018, an Australian citizen lodged a claim for a GST refund for goods worth more than
  $50,000, including clothing and a ‘2019 model’ bicycle with an invoice value of $27,999. Due to
  the high value of the goods, the claim was referred to the Tourist Refund Office (TRO) for
  consideration. A TRO claim summary describes what the TRO found after speaking to the stores
  where the claimant purportedly bought the goods.

  The ‘2019 model’ bicycle was not yet on the market, and would cost around $15,000 when it did
  become available (not $27,999). The clothing store did not ‘deal in’ amounts claimed on the
  invoice. Invoice numbers and a logo on the invoices did not match those in use by the stores.
  The TRO officer who reviewed the claim concluded that the May 2018 invoices were likely to be
  fraudulent and refused the claim. A search of the claimant’s TRS history found he had made 12
  claims between September 2017 and May 2018, for goods ostensibly worth more than $586,000
  (representing refunds totalling more than $53,000) from the two stores. The ABF placed an alert
  in the TRS system on the passport number used for the claims. Any further claim lodged using
  that passport number should trigger a message that would advise the processing officer to refer
  the claim to the TRO for further examination

  • 

    rynnethia on 15/06/2023 - 14:11

    -1

    Interesting, thanks for digging that up! So they caught the guy doing it, but never actually charged him for anything and just flagged him? Feels like a very "wtf are you doing Australia" moment to me.

  • 

    Seraphin7 on 15/06/2023 - 14:54

    +1

    Maybe it's me, but I would have thought lodging claims for $586k worth of stuff over less than a year would have rung alarm bells long before the events that triggered the investigation.

• 

  Porker on 15/06/2023 - 14:19

  Is the information you seek to assist with you actually performing the fraud? (rhetorical)

  Keep in mind that one can only claim the GST component back. So bumping say a $200 item to $2000 is $18.1 (refund) to $181.8 (refund).

  One is definitely not going to be able to retire on that extra money. Even though the TRS process can be exploited, if caught, you'll forever be flagged when using the service.

  The risk certainly doesn't seem to match the reward.

  • 

    rynnethia on 15/06/2023 - 14:49

    I guess I started the question asking for a confirmation if the government is actually checking this, and seems like the answer is mostly no, which is ??? lol wut

    Then I arrived at this question: Why isn't the Australian government actually trying to check for authenticity consistently and what's stopping them from making this system more automatic? If they wanted to, they could check for authenticity manually (probably checking with the business itself), so why can't they make this automatic?

    I saw this article by the ATO: https://www.ato.gov.au/General/The-fight-against-tax-crime/O… and I'm just confused how "a fake business" was even possible. They literally have a list of all the registered ABNs, is it that hard to make an automatic check against that list?

    It just seems quite careless to me to make a program that throws money out only to not have a stricter vetting system. In 2019, an article says the program already costed them $500 million. If only 1% of that is fradulent, that's like $5 million saved.

    Sorry for the wall of text, I really wished the answer to my question was "yes they check it, theyre just careless sometimes", and not the government not doing their due diligence on this.

    • 

      mskeggs on 15/06/2023 - 15:00

      +1

      Same reason cars aren’t limited to 110km/h.
      Building an IT system to handle x million GST registered vendors in Australia to lodge their receipts for TRS would be super costly and a pain.
      But if it happened automatically, people would claim lots of TRS.
      I have literally never bothered, as the amounts are small and it is a hassle.

      But if it was automated, many, many more people would claim.
      So it would cost the government millions to run, and millions more in lost tax.

      Much more than fraud.

      • 

        rynnethia on 15/06/2023 - 16:24

        Interesting point, you're saying because the system currently is poor and slow, making it actually decent and more fraud-proof will cost them even more money because more people will actually use the system? 😂 I feel like at that point, they might as well just scrap off the system if they have no plans to make it good at all.

        I do agree making that sort of IT system sounds like it costs a lot, but I feel like there's so many things you could do to make it more fraud proof without making a huge IT system:

        • Checking if the ABN is legit
        • Only allow shops who are ready to provide ATO with proper receipts be eligible for GST refund. Theres a few countries doing this, not every shop provides a tax-free experience. Only send receipts over $300 to the ATO. Any reciept past 2 months are deleted off the ATO system.
        • Instead of making ATO handle the tax refund, make the stores handle the tax refund conditions instead especially for tourists (Japan does this https://www.globalblue.com/shoppers/how-to-shop-tax-free/des…). Way bigger overhaul of the system, but then that would put the problem to the businesses rather than ATO who is quite understaffed to handle GST refunds properly.

        Mind you these suggestions make TRS way harder, but if they'd prefer making a non-automated system that's painful anyway, you might as well just make it even harder to claim but much harder to exploit 🤷🏻‍♀️

• 

  xdigger on 15/06/2023 - 15:03

  -5

  ATO/TRS should just ban GST refunds outright for Australian citizens like what some countries are doing, after all the ATO eventually need to increase tax revenues to pay Uncle Sam $368 billions for the upcoming Aukus submarines.

  • 

    Eeples on 15/06/2023 - 15:39

    Isn’t the whole idea of the gst refund though is to encourage purchases within Australia instead of overseas?