‘I joined the club’: GST tax fraud nets good behaviour release
A Victorian woman avoided jail after repeated efforts to have more than $115,000 in fake GST payments paid out to a dog grooming business that had been set up over a decade earlier but remained dormant until early 2020.
The woman is one of at least 56,000 people who participated in the $1.6 billion tax fraud scheme, which was spread by social media influencers on TikTok. The scam involved individuals obtaining an Australian Business Number then using their MyGov account to file fraudulent business activity statements to claim GST refunds that in some cases exceeded $100,000.
After successfully netting a fraudulent GST refund of more than $20,000 in March 2022, Jennifer Blanke, with the help of her now deceased partner Nathan Finlay, made subsequent claims for GST refunds of around $48,000 and nearly $30,000 in the following two months. Both were rejected by the Australian Taxation Office.
TikTok says it co-operated with the Tax Office to permanently ban more than 60 accounts that promoted GST fraud.
Blanke, living in the regional Victoria town of Mildura was “warned that you may be prosecuted if you intentionally reported false information in the future” according to a judgment in the County Court of Victoria in Melbourne in late July.
After her partner’s death, Blanke made another false claim where she would have netted nearly $17,000 had it not been rejected by the ATO.
“You made the false claims while not carrying on any business. This was not overstatement of entitlement – it was complete fabrication,” Judge Fiona Todd wrote in her judgment.
“Your offending was unsophisticated – even when you knew that the ATO was likely to reject your claims you persisted in making them and did so in the face of clear warnings that
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