A Mildura mum has told a court she “thought it was legit” to claim thousands from the Australian Taxation Office for a defunct Alice Springs business.
Brylei Phillips pleaded guilty to seven charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception in the Mildura Magistrates’ Court after swindling almost $39,000 in false GST claims between February and April last year.
In 2022, the 28-year-old re-established a cancelled Australian Business Number (ABN) for a catering business she operated in Alice Springs in January of the same year.
Subsequently, she proceeded to make seven separate tax claims to the ATO, totalling $38,765, for purported business expenses.
The police prosecutor told the court Philips was instructed through the process by her brother who had just come out of prison.
“The accused stated to police that once her brother got out of prison, he helped her,” he told the court.
The mum-of-three told police “she thought it was legit,” before further police investigations revealed she knew she was breaking the law.
“Communication between her and her brother indicated they knew it was illegal,” the prosecutor said.
Despite arguments made by Phillips’s lawyer Hugh Middleton that the actions were purely opportunistic, Magistrate Michael Coghlan disagreed.
“I don’t think that it’s opportunistic at all. I’m certain you were well aware, and you intended to do this,” he said.
He emphasised that financial difficulties did not justify stealing from the tax office.
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“There is hardly anyone in the community that isn’t finding it a little difficult financially, but that doesn’t mean you can go and rort the tax office,” he said.
In his judgment, Mr Coghlan considered Phillips’s repayment to the ATO and imposed a sentence of 250 hours of community work and a 12-month good behaviour bond.
“I have given significant weight to the fact that the amount owed to the tax office has been repaid,” he explained.
Mr Coghlan used the opportunity to raise awareness of the issue of tax fraud, after multiple cases were heard in Mildura courts in recent weeks.
“I don’t understand why we aren’t hearing more about this in budget talks,” he said.
He said he didn’t understand why people weren’t thinking “hang on, we’ve got a problem where a large number of people have taken something like $2.2bn from the tax office”.
It was “money that could have been spent on things like aged care”, he said.