Can Office of State Revenue legally take money from your bank account?

[Fangblade1]

Couple of year's ago the teenager I was I would always catch the train without a ticket to save up, I would get caught like once a month or something but this made me owe the government under 1000 buck's.. I never paid it, now it came to bite me in the ass.. I want to pay this off now after today.. They got into to my bank account and took every cent from me..is this legal though? I got no emails or mail's saying that they would do this.. I had to ring the bank and ask them if some guy took my money..

I am a uni student and that was my fortnightly pay..

Seemed a bit fishy too, I put the money into my St George account called Maxi saver (an account without a card, no reason to use it online or in real life) and it just disappeared =(


I hope you guy's can help me out here, I am going to pay this back but I would of loved it if I had the chance to contact them and work out a payment system where every fortnight I pay a fix amount.. which can be done (website infor)

 

[OzWaveGuy]

I hope you guy's can help me out here, I am going to pay this back but I would of loved it if I had the chance to contact them and work out a payment system where every fortnight I pay a fix amount.. which can be done (website infor)

The answer is yes they can....but a debt collector must follow due process by notifying you that they're going to do it eg like the ATO/IRS. They probably sent you a Notice to garnish wages/bank account at some point in the past.

A million ways to resolve these situations both publicly and in the private...., I would ring them, explain the situation and offer to make a weekly/monthly payment to discharge the charging instrument. No matter what they say on the phone, Follow-up with a letter asking for forgiveness and that you will pay x dollars per month etc - so you then have a record (in case they refuse your offer).

If they refuse your offer, then they'll put themselves in dishonor and you can ask them to show good cause why your offer has been refused. Keep all documentation/copies.

I should add: Once you have sent them your letter of offer and have a australia post return receipt, send a copy of the letter and a copy of the return reciept to your bank and tell them to cease all garnishment actions from the debt collector as you are resolving the situation. The bank will have no choice but to cease the abovementioned actions.

Again - use australia post return receipts and keep them

 

[McLovin]

Couple of year's ago the teenager I was I would always catch the train without a ticket to save up, I would get caught like once a month or something but this made me owe the government under 1000 buck's.. I never paid it

I hope you guy's can help me out here, I am going to pay this back but I would of loved it if I had the chance to contact them and work out a payment system where every fortnight I pay a fix amount.. which can be done (website infor)

(my bolds)

So you willingly broke the law, refused to pay the fine for a couple of years, then expect the OSR to sit and wait for you "to contact them and work out a payment system".

How about a little personal responsibility?

And don't listen to anything OzWaveGuy says, he makes bush lawyers look like SC's.