Oh dear…Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand (CAANZ) recently asked the Australian Taxation Office and New Zealand’s Internal Revenue for the strangest excuses they’ve heard from taxpayers for not paying their tax debts or lodging their income tax returns.

The excuses included the following (don’t try these on me or you may find me questioning you):

• I need an extension because I am going to a wedding
• My mailbox is full of grass and weeds so I didn’t receive any ATO correspondence or lodgement reminder letters
• Snails eat our mail, so your lodgement demand letter must have been eaten
• My puppy got into the letter box and ate it
• The parrot are the reminder letter
• I can’t do it because I’m helping someone else do theirs
• The mailman stole it
• My ex-husband steals my mail
• I just got divorced and my ex has all the files and our computer
• I had a fight with my wife and she works for my tax agent so I couldn’t meet with him
• I couldn’t lodge my 2003 tax return because I was suffering from pre-trauma from a serious car accident I had in 2007
• I broke my wrist six months ago and it has been a long road to recovery
• I didn’t know the due date (from an employer fort he past 20 years)
• My client can’t lodge because she is currently at the North Pole

Oh dear indeed….if you are ever unsure of a lodgement or payment deadline, just ask!

Regards

Courtesy of May/June 2017 Acuity magazine provided to members of CAANZ