Initially the letter I received wanted me to confirm my income for the period jan-jun 30 2014 as tax record did not match my declared income in that financial year. I made an error as I could not work out from the very limited options online as to how to give my somewhat complicated earnings. I should also state that my initial call to the number on the form, gave me someone who just simply said I needed to fill out the online form. The issues that I faced was that in the 5/6 times I called the number I was cut off 3 times, hung up on once and when i was able to get through they could not help me as the staff that answer the phones are not the staff who assess the information online and you are not able to contact them directly, they only call you, and then do not leave a message or a contact number, this happened twice.
My issue was that i declared earnings via profit and loss statements for approx 6 months of the financial year and then left newstart from about the 10th jan 2014. Obvioulsy my tax records will not coincide with centerlinks as any earnings I received post newstart date I do not share with centerlink, but with the tax department only. I had two employers, one of whom makes up the dates I work to send to their pay department as we are contract tutors and they would not know what hours we work, just the total number of hours allocated to us by another person. So the dates i told centerlink, that is, you need to declare earnings when you worked not when you got paid or when a payslip says you did, did not match. that was issue number one. They wanted pay statements; I was no longer able to access from another employer, but the earnings i was able to show via bank statements.
All in all, so as not to accrue a bad debt I had to enter into a pay arrangement that I tried to push out for as long as possible, hoping my debt, that I did not owe was going to be sorted out. the only way it finally did, was i rang the complaints line as I figured it would be recorded somewhere so that if i had to go seek legal help, or go to the press I wold have a record of it. This person was exceedingly helpful and she put me onto someone who was very curt and not so helpful but must have followed through as I then got a call pretty much the same day from the person assessing my debt who I had to then retell my entire story, go through the obvious flaw that centerlink data WILL NEVER MATCH according to the way they have configured it as clients do not conveniently leave at the end of a financial year and we need to declare income as we earn it not as we receive it. She chose to believe me but ashe could also have made life more difficult.
My biggest stress, was that this occurred before christmas in a down time for me with work, all contract academics do not get paid in the big semester breaks and so I try to save money for myself to cover me over this period and had not factored in a centerlink debt. I am reasonably adept with online computer things but found the centerlink reporting system very limited for things that did not sit exactly with their methodology or computer equilvilent.
Keep persisting but I recommend going to complaints as it seems that action has to be followed up, the staff at the compliance line will just hang up on you or calls just seemingly drop out if you can actually get a body to pick the thing up in the first place. i had my debt revoked.
It is all very well for the minister coming on national tv and saying they have a right to get back overpayments - he has missed the point entirely; they will always register as overpayments if individuals leave newstart to get work in the middle or part of a finanical year. records will never match up. I felt very stressed and teary, and weirdly guilty, even knowing that I had done nothing wrong and if anything would have declared more hours/money than earnt as i was paranoid about under declaring.
There is a level of sanctimoniousness from the powers that be that have said well we did not send out debt letters we send out letters to confirm income. If that is the case then you need a system where we can go into an office, talk to a real person and have them enter in the variables as well as being able to take notes when said information does not fit into a neat formula. The system is inadequate, based on a false premise and designed to alienate those it is meant to serve. Yes of course the government has the right to retrieve money it has overpaid. However, as i was trying to convey on yet another phone call that felt like being stuck in a groundhog day movie and yes minister all rolled up in one, that there is a large percentage of those who received letters that cannot be assumed to fit into this category, those that leave centerlink and earn money within that same financial year; work for an employer that does not pay when you earnt the money but even sometimes into the next financial year which then throws a spanner in the declaration works; as well as those employers who do not keep timesheets in their systems for longer than 2 years and makes up those timesheets when staff like tutors do not have fixed hours. There must be thousands of us - all of which cost the tax payer money to investigate, hours of personnel time, hours of my day, for no money back at all because the intial formula was incorrect to start with.