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Travel Restrictions |
When the tax office can stop you leaving the country |
In a recent case, a man was refused permission to leave Australia to visit his former wife, the mother of his children, who was dying and had only a few weeks to live. |
Where a person owes tax and the tax office believes on reasonable grounds that it is desirable to ensure they don't leave the country without paying, or making satisfactory arrangements for payment, it may issue a departure prohibition order preventing them from leaving Australia. |
There are restrictions on that power. Before a prohibition order can be issued, the tax office must have assessed a person for tax - mere suspicion that there might be an unassessed tax liability is not enough. |
Taxpayers can apply to the courts to have a departure prohibition order set aside. As an alternative, they might ask the tax office to issue them with a departure authorisation certificate. |
Before issuing any such authorisation, the tax office can require them to provide security for the payment of tax. |
The law says that if a taxpayer is unable to give security to the satisfaction of the tax office, the tax office can still allow the person to leave Australia on humanitarian grounds. |
In the case of the man wanting to visit his former wife, the tax office argued that if it believed the person could provide security but had not done so, as here, it did not have the power to allow them to leave the country on humanitarian grounds. |
