Banks had been warning since 2020 of a GST scam, which became the largest tax fraud in Australian history after it was promoted on the social media platform.
The Tax Office has admitted paying out more than $1.6 billion in fake GST claims as part of a $4.6 billion fraud based on a simple scheme promoted on social media platform TikTok – a total that is twice previous reports and the biggest tax fraud in Australian history.
From late 2020, banks noticed a wave of suspicious transactions where customers on social benefits had received large business payments – in some cases more than $100,000 – from the Tax Office. Although the Tax Office at first reported that the average amount claimed was $20,000, accountants in western Sydney told thethat among their clients, the average amount raised from the fraud was more than $80,000.
“We notified the ATO, and they didn’t want anything to do with it,” a bank executive told an adviser. “By late February 2022, we had dialled up our efforts to put a stop to these fraudulent attempts to a ’10 out of 10’. We pushed our efforts to an ‘11’ when we commenced Operation Protego.”
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