- In short: Family violence perpetrators are burdening their partners with tax debts they cannot shake, sometimes leading to bankruptcy.
- A change in the federal budget means the tax office can defer chasing debts in certain circumstances.
- What’s next? Advocates want the ATO to adopt a model used overseas, in which debts are reassigned to perpetrators.
The nature of coercive control, a combination of behaviours that restrict the lives and choices of people in abusive relationships, means some victim-survivors are unaware their personal details have been used to make them responsible for debts or appointed as company directors.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the tax office did not pursue debts.
But as restrictions ended and the economy took off, the ATO said it was owed more than $15 billion from 1.8 million entities and it set about chasing them up.
Research by Dr Kayis-Kumar and her project team reveals that approximately 14 per cent of women facing financial hardship due to tax debts have incurred them through situations involving intimate partner violence.
“We call it sexually transmitted debt,” she said.
“That person has used your name and business structures to put debts in your name and financially benefit.”
Dr Kayis-Kumar says our annual tax deadline of June 30 is the time to make that change in Australia.
“Economic abuse is something that we know is really problematic across our whole community, and we have an opportunity here for the ATO to turn things around,” she said.