Boyle spoke to the Age/Sydney Morning Herald/Four Corners investigation to expose the actions of the ATO. He has had repeated run-ins with management over his handling of cases. In 2016, he was sanctioned for inappropriately accessing files of clients he says he was trying to help. Then in September he was suspended with pay for allegedly remitting interest incorrectly on two cases and storing information on his work computer. Again, Boyle says his motive was to help taxpayers.

The instruction followed an email sent in May to staff towards the end of a shift: “the last hour of power is upon us ... that means you still have time to issue another five garnishees ... right?”

A garnishee notice is a debt-collecting tool that allows the tax office to order a bank to hand over money from the taxpayer’s account, without consulting the taxpayer. A standard garnishee notice requires the bank to keep sending money to the tax office whenever money is deposited in the account.

“We were instructed quite clearly and categorically to start issuing standard garnishees on every case,” he says.

It was June 8, 2017, when Boyle and other staff were called into a meeting and instructed to use more heavy-handed debt collection tactics on taxpayers who owed the tax office money.

“People were rushing around, there was a lot of paperwork, I wondered what was going on,” he says.

Amid the chaos of the end of the financial year, Richard Boyle strolled into work at the Adelaide branch of the Australian Taxation Office, a key centre for debt collection.

Boyle believes the decision in June to ratchet up debt collection activities was motivated by a revenue grab before the end of the financial year. In 2017 the tax office raised $360 billion in revenue from taxpayers.

He agreed to speak to the media to expose debt collection tactics.

Then at 8am on April 4, his home was raided by the ATO and Australian Federal Police. The warrant enabled them to seize his mobile phone, go through his computer and take a raft of documents. The warrant specifically refers to a reporter on this investigation, Adele Ferguson, and alleges that Boyle had illegally taken either originals or copies of taxpayer information, photos of ATO computer screens or emails. The ATO issued a statement saying it was now an ongoing investigation.

He decided to knock it back to speak to the media.

The ATO tried to settle with him in February, offering him a confidential payout and a statement of service to leave his job.

“The motivation appeared to be that we were just collecting revenue before the end of the financial year and it didn’t matter if we hurt members of the community,” he says.

Ron Shamir: “You would be looking at taxpayers who are less able to resist the might of the tax office." Credit:Eddie Jim

“You would be looking at taxpayers who are less able to resist the might of the tax office – taxpayers that are more vulnerable,” he says. “And that often meant individuals and small businesses – rather than larger businesses – who had less legal resources.”

Shamir says the pressure would build and result in shortcuts and staff looking for easy targets.

“It’s an estimate given to government so that it can plan and know how much tax revenue is to be collected,” Shamir says. “It then cascades down to various tax office branches and becomes a target of what they will be collecting in revenue for that financial year.”

He referred to it as “the plan”, an estimate of how much tax revenue the tax office will be collecting in the forthcoming financial year.

Others, including former senior ATO insider Ron Shamir, told the joint investigation his division in the Box Hill branch in Melbourne had revenue targets that had to be met.

The deputy commissioner for small business, Deborah Jenkins, declined to comment on Boyle’s allegations but says the tax office uses garnishee orders only as a last resort. “I don’t know the details about who it was sent to or anything like that, but what I do know is we use those powers very sparingly,” she says.

Richard Boyle: “I said it could possibly even push people towards suicide." Credit:James Elsby

At the June 8 meeting, Boyle says he made it clear that issuing garnishee orders to everyone could have profound repercussions. “I said it could possibly even push people towards suicide that needed our compassion, as opposed to the people that we should rightly be targeting with standard garnishees,” he says.

“It’s a really important part of what we do, we can’t set aside the fact that we are a revenue authority but for me it’s actually really important if we want people to willingly participate in our system ... That’s why our focus is on education, prevention, and support, and … a huge part of my team is actually dedicated to doing that work.”

The ATO’s Jenkins says she couldn’t talk about individual staff but denies the ATO is driven by revenue. “We don’t have a focus on the revenue collection,” she says.

The Age/Sydney Morning Herald/Four Corners investigation spoke to other current and former employees who confirm what Shamir says. One senior tax office insider, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, says “the plan” continues to exist and trickles down to employees in each business line. He says that, within each business line, key target areas are identified and revenue goals attached.

Shamir was sacked in mid-2015 for non performance. He took his case to the Fair Work Commission, winning initially but losing on appeal. The ATO offered to settle his case but he refused to sign a gag order.

Emails obtained by the joint investigation show that, on June 13, Boyle and other staff were sent a follow-up email with tips on garnishee notices.

“These clients are not entitled to any additional time and shouldn’t be granted any unless they have unbelievably exceptional circumstances,” the email says. “This can only be judged case by case but 95 per cent of these clients should be having either a FAWL [Firmer Action Warning Letter]/Garnishee or next recovery action on their account.”

In other words, accelerate 95 per cent of “these clients” to the next level of debt collection.

Boyle gives an insight into the world of debt collection, where staff are closely monitored and supplied with performance tables that itemise debt recovery measures including the number of garnishees each employee issues a week, the amount of debt collected, the number of calls and duration.

He says some staff were relatively new and were issuing standard garnishees on every case, without calling the taxpayers. “I was quite concerned and worried about the effect this would have on the community and many people on my floor were also quite worried.”

Garnishee n. Third party legally notified to surrender money to a debtor; v. to attach a debt by garnishment

Then, in late August, everything changed. An email arrived saying Adelaide had been issuing more garnishee notices than anywhere else and a “significant” number were inappropriate. “It seemed to be they were covering themselves and trying to explain away the original decision as a mistake,” Boyle says.

Ken Phillips, an advocate for small business who runs Self-Employed Australia, believes the ATO targets small business instead of big business because the latter have more money to fight. “They [the tax office] set targets, they chase low-hanging fruit, people who are being honest and upright, and they whack them with a huge bill and then chase them,” he says.

Helen Petaia, who has been in battle with the ATO since late 2012, says: “In lots of ways it is like a false imprisonment because your life is put on hold, your business is put on hold and it’s up to you to prove your innocence.”

Helen Petaia: "They claimed we had been reckless." Credit:Paul Harris

Wrongly accused of fraud

Petaia set up a technology company, Safe Family Cards Australia in 2006, to deliver immediate access to critical medical information.

It was inspired by a medical emergency during the birth of her youngest son, Christian, when the hospital couldn’t find vital medical information, a situation that could have ended in a tragedy.

Investors backed the idea and she won contracts with sporting codes including the Queensland Rugby League and AFL Auskick. She also won government research and development grants and tax rebates.

But things started to unravel when the ATO announced it was auditing her businesses, which were based in Brisbane. At the conclusion of the audit meeting in December 2012, she was told the tax office would get back to her and audit her second company.

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Then came the bombshell.

At the beginning of November 2013, after hearing virtually nothing, despite making numerous calls to the tax office to follow up on the audits, Petaia was sent two letters stating that her companies owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the tax office.

“They claimed we had been reckless, that we had made false and misleading statements and that, because of that, we had to pay an additional 50 per cent penalties,” she says.

The tax bill came as the company was in the final stages of raising capital of up to $3 million to take the technology to the next stage. At that stage, there was no competition for this product on the market.

But it all fell apart and investors pulled out when she told them about the audit, the tax bill and the allegations that she had been dishonest and fraudulent.

I felt my head was on the chopping block and I had to fix the problem.

“It was overwhelming. I felt very abandoned at the time because the documents seemed to be very strong that we’d done the wrong thing. It was one thing for me to tell people, “Well, we haven’t done it,” but everybody said, “Well, Helen, you have to prove that.’”

Company cashflows dried up and she had to start living off a line of credit. She couldn’t pay her children’s school fees, couldn’t afford textbooks and school uniforms, started defaulting on bills; her car was repossessed and she was in arrears with the mortgage on the family home in Brisbane.

“Everything was imploding,” she says. “I didn’t have the option of finding another job because I was trying to keep the business alive and clear my name.”

Then, in November 2014, after almost a year of being pummelled, she decided to fight back. She requested everything that had been written about her and her companies.

In an interesting twist, on November 24, the tax office called her out of the blue to apologise.

Assistant commissioner Daryl Richardson followed it up with another call. Petaia says he admitted there had been a breakdown in ATO processes and that he apologised for this and for the impact it had on her and her colleagues.

By that stage, the two businesses were destroyed and a competitor had entered the market and was gaining traction.

The compensation offered was nowhere near the millions of dollars she says she lost. The ATO rarely offers taxpayers high compensation, at least not unless the taxpayer is prepared to fight for it. It initially offered Petaia $20,000 for the errors and for the maladministration of her audit.

Petaia decided to launch her own forensic investigation to see what had gone wrong with her audit.

Case notes obtained under Freedom of Information laws revealed a litany of problems. Crucial information had not been passed on between case officers. The ATO misplaced important documents yet accused her of withholding this information. It didn’t audit one of the two companies yet decided the company owed the tax office money.

“Well, they did fabricate documents,” she says. “I don’t know how you can write an audit finalisation letter about an audit that never happened?”

With Petaia’s second company, Vital One Technologies, the ATO used the contents of the audit from the first company, Safe Family Cards, to slap a separate debt on it.

She discovered that a case officer had been instructed to cut and paste the first company’s document and use that to build a case that the second company owed it money.

In February this year – more than five years after the tax office first flagged she was being audited – she entered mediation.

The offer was significantly higher than the $20,000 it had initially offered but it was still poles apart from the millions she has lost.

“We’ve lost our investments, we’ve lost our home, I’ve personally lost my business reputation,” she says. “The only thing I haven’t lost is my family.”

The only redress is suing the ATO in court. “I suppose the only way to get fairness is to take it outside the tax office and to have people not involved in the tax office become judge of my destiny,” she says.

“They were trying to find something to scalp me for”: businessman Peter Fortunatow

Attacked as a tax evader

Peter Fortunatow has also suffered at the hands of the ATO. In 2015 the tax office accused him of fraud and tax evasion on GST credits relating to investment properties.

The ATO first audited his family trust in 2008 in relation to those investment properties and gave him a clean bill of health.

Fast-forward seven years to November 3, 2015 and it changed its mind, accusing him of fraud and tax evasion.

Unlike other institutions, the ATO only has to form an opinion of fraud or evasion and the taxpayer is guilty and has to pay now – then try and prove their innocence.

Stunned by the accusations, Fortunatow lodged a Freedom of Information request to review his file.

The file included case notes of a conversation he was supposed to have had with an ATO auditor on December 12, 2008 about an important technical ruling which could impact his eligibility for GST credits. It says, “I made him (Peter) aware of ATO ID 2008/114. He said he would check this ID”.

Fortunatow says he never had that conversation. He alleges those words were falsely inserted, possibly during the 2015 audit. He says if the conversation had taken place, why hadn’t the tax office followed it up? He also points out that the technical ruling it was referring to in the December 12 conversation was withdrawn on December 17.

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Using his IT expertise, he investigated how the phone-call log of the alleged conversation had been made. Through subsequent Freedom of Information searches he found that his file was stored on a shared drive that enabled staff to go in and modify it anonymously and without accountability.

The ATO conceded the case notes weren’t in their original format but denied the content had been changed.

“At the end of the day, it’s a Word document, and anyone can go into it and modify it,” Fortunatow says.

On September 5, 2016 he lodged a complaint with the Inspector-General of Taxation, alleging his file had been manipulated. Weeks later, on October 7, the ATO dropped the fraud and evasion charge and wiped his debt without explanation.

Fortunatow says the ATO is an organisation made up of “career climbers” who get promoted by the number of scalps they collect. “And they’ll do it whichever way they can.”

Peter Fortunatow: "They've got way too much power." Credit:James Elsby

Where to now?

He has won one fight, but the war isn’t over.

“The other battle relates to my IT consulting business,” he says. “As part of that, I provide services and what they’re saying is we’re going to treat you like an individual and we want to tax you like an individual. They’ve backdated the taxes and they’ve applied a 50 per cent penalty and the interest is accumulating so it's interest on interest.”

Small business advocate Ken Phillips says there are more than 780,000 people in Australia in the gun on this.

“As a self-employed person, you should be and are entitled to be treated under tax law as a business, which means you’ve got eligibility for certain business deductions; if you’re in a partnership you can share the income with your partner, perfectly legitimate, perfectly legal, what people do every day of the week,” Phillips says.

But as the ATO’s Jenkins confirms, personal services income is a risk area for the ATO. “One of many risk areas we look at.”

For Peter Fortunatow, the war with the tax office has taken its toll. “It’s been a journey of being depressed, being desperate, not being able to speak to people about it, not knowing who to go to, and not knowing what’s going to happen,” he says.

Like Helen Petaia and others, Fortunatow is not about to give up. “This is bigger than me,” he says. “There’s a saying: power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. They’ve got way too much power ... and it needs to be called out.”

Know more? Email the authors on adele.ferguson@fairfaxmedia.com.au or nassimkhadem@fairfaxmedia.com.au