I had already reported all my fortnightly income back in 2010, so why did the new data matching system overwrite all that information with an average fortnightly income taken from the ATO? This new system is wasting everyone's time! Luckily I had access to the old pay database at work to print out ALL my payslips from 2010/11 all over again. Just uploaded them now and after 2 months of trying to prove this the lady from Centrelink has got my fake debt down to about $84 which she said should also go once the uploaded pay slips go through. In the meantime, the debt recovery team has said I need to start repaying the debt until it is cleared - ridiculous! Impact: time and resources wasted; hours and hours spent on phone calls to 4 different teams in centrelink (initial phone call to customer service 1hr, compliance team 8 phone calls 8hrs, processing team 2 phone calls 2hrs, debt recovery team 1 phone call half hour); anxiety and worry of being told I falsely reporting my income and have to pay, hours spent trying to access and print old payslips, anxiety of having this happen right before Christmas!
The government should have made sure that the system was set up properly so that it did not overwrite original fortnightly reported income with an average calculated from an annual ATO income. The government has been very dismissive of the issue which is estimated to affect over a million people. The government should just admit the issues associated with the new system and fix the problem!