Hi Murray…This info might interest you. I’m an Ex Centrelink worker with 30 years experience. I have always worked ‘at the coalface’ i.e. in a local office with customers. I retired 4 years ago…but whats happening now is NOT new. Centrelink have matched info with the ATO for many years. In the past they’d receive raw information & real life Customer service officers would ‘sift’ though the matches of data…Centrelink customers & ATO Taxable income details, They’d look at start dates for employment as customers had declared it , see of it was for the same employer & roughly work out if it lined up They’d check to see if a customer pad been on payment from Centrelink for only part of the year. They’d check if employers were the same on both data bases. IF there were any matches that looked like a person HAD POSSIBLY been overpaid…they’d write to the customer & ask them to call… & tease our WHERE the discrepancy was. Then ask for proof (if it was still available from the customer…ie payslips. ) . If the customer didn’t have them & it looked like there is a possibility of an overpayment , write to the employer to ASK for the information. IF then evidence was collected that the customer had not declared the income correctly/ at all// not used the gross wages/ect & a debt existed… then the debt calculator would raise the debt in accordance with the legislation & the customer was written to. NOW most of that is done away with. It is all automated. A match comes up & the ATO details from . taxable info are split into 26 & calculated using that.& a debt raised.
I don’t think for ONE minute that its Centrelinks doing…THIS smells of the Govt trying the exercise on….Centrelink would NOT have suggested it as they KNOW how many of the matches actually produce REAL debts…NOT what the Govt wants to hear.

It has concerned me a lot over the Christmas period, the short time frame given to pay back the debt initially stressed me out. The fact that it concerns payments from 5 years ago has made it very difficult to track down pay slips and documentation. I feel angry that I am the one accountable for proving the inaccuracies. It has been frustrating dealing with people on the phone who clearly don't understand the system and can't explain the reason for my debt and the skeleton staff they have had available over the holiday period even though they have demanded the payments over this period.

I was on Youth Allowance when I first moved to the city to attend university. First in my family to do so etc. I applied for Youth Allowance and started receiving while I looked for a job in a new state (and living away from a small country town for the first time). I secured employment, but initially it was casual with unpredictable hours. I later went off Centrelink when I had a reliable enough job to pay my own way through uni (I received payments over two financial years).

When it had been over five and a half years since I had been on Centrelink, I destroyed all my financial paperwork from this time. I figured if the ATO wanted me to keep paperwork for two years for simple returns, then I would keep my Centrelink related paperwork for five years, as it probably constituted a more complicated return.

Now the government is chasing people who were on Centrelink from six years ago (and have the capacity to go further back). As I received part payments, and I worked fulltime for periods in the same financial years as I received Youth Allowance, it seems likely I have a "debt" too.

The Turnbull government’s mass invoices – constructed from data matching to claim discrepancies exist with Centrelink’s casual, disabled and vulnerable income earners – are expected to be used across the entire pensioner and social security sector. New discrepancies can be created over a recipient’s claimed asset values to substantiate invoices for ‘over-payments’.

The ‘debt’ letters are distressing many recipients, as the public outcry shows.
Data matching and garnishee was originally implemented by Labor in government, but it was the Turnbull government that devised the more aggressive, presumptive and system-wide invoicing strategy.

With a flagged $4 billion to be recovered over four years, Centrelink’s demand letters over alleged debts could be just the start.

The Turnbull government’s mass invoices – constructed from data matching to claim discrepancies exist with Centrelink’s casual, disabled and vulnerable income earners – are expected to be used across the entire pensioner and social security sector. New discrepancies can be created over a recipient’s claimed asset values to substantiate invoices for ‘over-payments’.

Our informant said the Centrelink data matching strategy would soon be exposed as counter-productive, with recipients now likely to desist in seeking any paid work for fear of losing any of their welfare payments.

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