Your responsibilities
We all deserve to feel safe and to be treated with respect.
When you contact us, you can expect our staff to provide a simple, helpful and respectful service. We expect you to be respectful to our staff when you do business with us.
Respectful behaviour includes:
- treating us with courtesy, consideration and respect
- explaining what you need without yelling, threatening or abusing our staff
- listening to our staff so they can help you
- not filming, recording or photographing our staff without their consent.
Unreasonable and inappropriate behaviour
Unreasonable behaviour is conduct that is unreasonable and inappropriate in all circumstances – regardless of how stressed, angry or frustrated a client is. Behaviour of this type unreasonably compromises the health, safety and security of our staff.
Examples of unreasonable and inappropriate behaviour include:
- acts of aggression, verbal abuse and statements that are derogatory, discriminatory on the grounds of race, religion or gender, or defamatory
- harassment, intimidation or physical violence
- rude, confronting and threatening correspondence
- threats of harm to self or third parties, threats with a weapon or threats to damage property (including bomb threats)
- stalking (in person, online or via email)
- emotional manipulation
- persistent questioning about a staff member’s personal life, relationship status, religious or cultural background or other harassing behaviour
- contacting staff outside work, including through social media platforms
- posting illegal, threatening or defamatory statements about staff on social media or other websites
- audio or video recording interviews or phone calls without prior consent.
When you behave this way, our staff don’t feel safe and can’t help you.
How we may respond
If your behaviour is unreasonable, we may:
- end a phone call with you or ask you to leave our premises
- send you a letter asking you to be more respectful when you contact us again.
If you’re violent or make a threat of violence, we’ll phone the police.
If your behaviour has made our staff or others feel unsafe, we’ll put a 'managed service plan' in place.
Managed service plans
Managed service plans manage access to ATO services by those clients who pose a real or perceived threat to our staff.
Managed service plan restrictions
You can still use our services if you are on a managed service plan. However, your plan may limit how you can contact us.
You may either:
- only be able to contact some phone numbers
- only be able to contact us online or in writing.
We’ll contact you if we decide to apply a restriction.
Removing your restrictions
If you don’t agree with our decision to start a managed service plan, you can ask us to review it. You need to send your request and the reasons why you don’t agree to:
Australian Taxation Office
PO Box 1271
ALBURY NSW 2640
We review managed service plans regularly. We’ll remove restrictions when we’re sure you:
- will be respectful
- don’t pose a risk to our staff.
Other ways to contact us
You can have an authorised person contact us on your behalf. An authorised person is someone you have told us can share information or make decisions for you.