The Taxation Institute of Australia called upon the ATO to take appropriate action after a significant number of urgent appeals for solution to widely known problems with the Running Balance Account system. The response from the ATO was to release a policy document under the innocuous-sounding title 'Issues arising from the overlap of PAYG annual instalments and lodgement of income tax returns.'
Hidden behind a substantial amount of technical jargon that even tax advisors found hard to understand is an admission from the ATO that they are currently sending thousands of small taxpayers letters that are correct, but if the taxpayers rely on them, the ATO will fine them. And this admission is made under a heading entitled: 'ATO Policy'.