Australian Newsletter DRIVE AGAINST TAX DODGERS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 18

Australian Newsletter DRIVE AGAINST TAX DODGERS

[From FRANK PUDDICOMBE, N.Z.PA. Special Correspondent! SYDNEY, May 14. The deputy commissioner of taxation, Mr R. R. Gray, this week told of some of the “dodges” employed by tax free-loaders. The Taxation Department is to make a drive against those making false claims in their taxation returns.

A particular target will be people claiming for nonexistent children. Mr Gray warned that any taxpayer claiming deductions for an imaginary wife and children could be fined up to £5OO or gaoled for six months.

A man who invented a wife and three children to save tax was fined £l3O in Sydney recently. The tax inspectors caught up with him because one year he sent his “children” to one school and the next year to another 30 miles away. Deserter Impersonated Another man found he was not beyond the reach of the tax investigator although he was officially dead. The man, a starting-price bookmaker, avoided tax for 12 years by getting an army deserter to impersonate him. The deserter took the bookmaker’s job and even claimed the bookmaker’s wife as a dependent

When the deserter died, the bookmaker got his wife to identify the body as his, in a bid to avoid tax for the rest of his life. The plan failed. The Taxation Department’s team of investigators recovered a record £l3m in unpaid tax in 1961-62. Their probing results in more than 11,000 New South Wales people appearing before the courts for tax offences each year. A City Council Aiderman, fearing that Sydney could be-| come a city of bachelors and spinsters, has called for a report. on the desirable propor- ; tions of bachelor flats to family units in the city and suburbs. Alderman F. Moran told a council meeting that 854 bachelor flats had been built in Sydney during the last two years. He said these flats, comprising a bed-sitting room and kitchen, were an attractive proposition for developers, because they yielded a quick and steady rental return for a mimimum outlay of capital. Apart from council and housing commission projects, the 854 bachelor flat blocks represented the only Sydney residential development he knew of since 1962.