The Australian Taxation Office is working to crack down on myths spread by the country's sovereign citizen movement in the lead-up to tax time, including investigating a self-described spiritual accountant who allegedly sells courses claiming to help people avoid paying tax.
Australians are expected to lodge their taxes over the coming months for the 2023/24 financial year, and misinformation is already beginning to spread on the authority's social media pages.
When the tax office posted on social media about the July 1 tax cuts, there was an influx of since-deleted comments from people questioning the legitimacy of the government and claiming taxation was "voluntary".
An ATO spokesperson said these "sovereign citizen type" claims have been repeatedly debunked and warned people who failed to pay their taxes may face "severe penalties".
However, some of these theories are persisting despite repeated warnings from government authorities.
One person who commented on a post on the authority's Facebook page was 'spiritual accountant' Abbey Benvegnu, or Abbey Rose, who is currently under investigation by the ATO for selling financial advice for thousands of dollars allegedly promoting tax evasion.
"Gotta keep the revenue high to stabilise the GDP," she wrote.
"Then fractional banking to pump the economy with high debt-based currency.
"Happy to show you a dozen more trends worth looking into the address the elephant in the room."
Experts rubbish claims
An academic from the University of Sydney who attended Princeton and Harvard universities in the US, Micah Burch said it was concerning to see sovereign citizen movements appear to have entered into the financial space.
"I want to be clear – this is rambling nonsense," the tax lawyer said.
"It defies my credulity to believe that there's this many intelligent people who believe this nonsense, and I find myself really frustrated at the level of interest."
Financial sovereignty, an off-shoot of the sovereign citizen movement, has gained traction particularly around tax time in the past, and often spreads claims including 'tax is voluntary' and 'the ATO is not a legal entity'.
An ATO spokeswoman said these key themes spruiked by sovereign citizens in the lead-up to tax time were hopelessly flawed, and anyone who followed the advice offered by the movement could be putting themselves at risk of prosecution.
"Tax is not voluntary," she said.
"Taxes pay for essential services for the community such as healthcare, education, defence, roads and railways, and payments for welfare, disaster relief and pensions.
"Not paying your tax can have severe consequences, including criminal prosecution where individuals deliberately do not engage with the ATO.
"Schemes of this nature are hopelessly flawed and could lead to severe civil and criminal consequences for anyone tricked into participating.
"'Sovereign citizen' type claims promoted by some that somehow you can opt out of the tax system, or that the ATO does not have legal standing, have been repeatedly debunked."
Lifting the veil
Ms Benvegnu is one of many people in Australia offering tax advice for a price, despite not being a registered accountant.
Ms Benvegnu hosts a number of websites, including a Facebook page with more than 5,000 members, where she shares her views and issues advice to those in the group about legal and tax issues.
Primarily, Ms Benvegnu encourages and charges her followers to set up not-for-profit organisations as a way to funnel their income and avoid having to lodge tax through a number of exemptions in the charity sector.
It's a practice that has previously been rebuked by ATO assistant commissioner Jennifer Moltisant, and the authority has previously signalled it would be cracking down on "sham" not-for-profits.
Ms Benvegnu also preaches common misinformation debunked by the ATO, including the ongoing belief tax is voluntary and 'no one has ever been prosecuted for not lodging'.
The ATO prosecuted 170 non-lodgements in the last financial year.
While the advice Ms Benvegnu issues on her social media is often free, those who are interested in "exiting the taxation system" need to pay her up to $7,500 to access her support and "special documents" she says equate to a "red pill"; a concept taken from the Matrix movies.
An audio recording of one of Ms Benvegnu's seminars heard by the ABC evoked sovereign citizen concepts that have previously been flagged by the FBI as markers of the movement, including strawman duality and the idea Australia is a business and its citizens are currency.
According to a review into the growth of the sovereign citizen movement in Australia, the ‘strawman’ or ‘split-person’ argument "asserts that there are real, natural individuals that are different from fictional or ‘artificial’ legal persons".
She spoke to over a dozen people for over an hour, about war crimes, the Garden of Eden, the monarchy and the war in Gaza.
The people on the call paid $33 each to access the seminar.
A spokeswoman for the ATO said they could not comment on individual cases and would not confirm whether they were investigating Ms Benvegnu.
Ms Benvegnu has spoken on a number of occasions about being contacted by the tax office.
She said she had been targeted for her views by people who disagreed with her teachings.
"[I've experienced] tip-offs to the ATO and the Tax Practitioner's Board to launch investigation and somehow take me down," she wrote on her private Facebook page.
In another seminar, she claimed the ATO was "issuing summons against clients" and "the ATO is after Abbey Rose".
A Tax Practitioner's Board spokeswoman also said she could not confirm whether the board was investigating Ms Benvegnu.
'A tragedy' waiting to happen
Ms Benvegnu continues to deny any links to the sovereign citizen movement and did not respond to direct questions from the ABC.
Instead, she provided a seven-page response that included two YouTube videos about journalistic accountability, a notice to declare peace and invoking article 25.3 of the Rome Statute.
University of Technology Sydney expert Dr Harry Hobbs said the financial space was one of the most dangerous areas sovereign citizen ideas could infiltrate.
"I don't want people to lose their homes or to fall further down the rabbit hole of the sort of these organisations," he said.
"These people are saying, 'If you pay $5,000, I'll make it so you don't need to pay taxes ever again.'
"That's not true."
Dr Hobbs, who has studied the impact of sovereign citizen movements in Australia, said those who get sucked in could find themselves in serious trouble come tax time.
"It will not succeed for them, and they'll end up worse off than they were before, and I think that's a tragedy," he said.
Mr Burch said the ATO had a responsibility to ensure sovereign citizen types were properly informed, and other agencies like consumer protection should keep people safe from joining.
"We need to be coming down hard on this type of behaviour and ensuring that the public gets the message that this is nonsense," he said.
ATO sends warning shot
As sovereign citizens continue to spread misinformation around tax time, Mr Burch said the growing popularity of the movement was only a sign of things to come.
"You don't have to be left or right wing to believe that taxes are the price we pay for civilisation, and we contribute to the Australian federal government because it provides this amazing country we have," he said.
"We've all got to contribute to that … it's frustrating just as a citizen, that there are people that are taking the pain of paying tax and undermining our national project."
Dr Hobbs, who has studied various iterations of the sovereign citizen movement across Canada and beyond, said the movement was still in its early stages in Australia.
"I get it – because law is complex, and it can be off-putting," Dr Hobbs said.
"If someone's telling you, I've got a solution for the very real problem you've got right now, you can convince yourself they're telling the truth."
He said it was critical authorities began identifying people at risk of falling for sovereign citizen movement ideals, before they lost money or were prosecuted.
"We need to help people go back logically, and ask: if you don't have to pay taxes why does anyone pay tax?" he said.
"It can be hard to pull out of it … but there is a social cost."
Death and taxes
At the end of Ms Benvegnu's Zoom online seminar, she took questions.
One woman asked if she could still access Medicare if she did not pay taxes.
Yes, Ms Benvegnu said.
"It'd be a war crime to decline your health services."
