Richard Boyle, the former Australian Taxation Office (ATO) employee who blew the whistle on aggressive and unfair debt collection practices against small businesses, has been spared conviction and time behind bars after a seven-year legal battle.
The South Australian District Court on Thursday sentenced Boyle to a 12-month good behaviour bond with no conviction recorded.
The Adelaide man in May pleaded guilty to four charges, related to recording private conversations, noting another person’s tax file number, capturing sensitive information, and disclosing those details to another entity.
While those charges can carry hefty financial penalties and two years imprisonment, Boyle was spared the harshest outcome in a plea deal struck with prosecutors.
The sentence relates to his accusation that the ATO directed staff to impose garnishee notices — which ask third parties to pay money held for tax debtors directly to the ATO — without due cause and consideration for small business taxpayers.
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Boyle flagged those concerns internally, but they were dismissed by an ATO investigator.
He was offered a settlement for allegedly breaching the public service code of conduct while gathering evidence, subject to a gag order.
But Boyle ultimately turned down the settlement and decided to share his claims with the ABC’s Four Corners and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2018.
Prosecutors levelled 66 charges against him in 2019, related to recording sensitive phone calls and sharing sensitive taxpayer information.
If proven in court, those charges could have resulted in a 161-year sentence.
Boyle’s claims spurred a 2019 review by the Inspector-General of Taxation (IGTO), which found allegations of an ATO-wide “cash grab” were not sustained.
However, the review did find one team leader within the ATO’s Adelaide office did “ironically” ask staff to issue five garnishee notices in a so-called “hour of power”.
Boyle challenged the findings of that review, telling a Senate inquiry of “a significant distortion of the facts” by the IGTO.
The directive to issue hardline garnishee notices was “incontrovertible, and categorical,” claimed Boyle.
Since first facing charges, Boyle failed to secure immunity from prosecution under federal whistleblowing protections.
But the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions ultimately dropped the vast majority of charges against Boyle prior to his plea deal.
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In a statement, Kieren Pender of the Human Rights Law Centre welcomed the no-conviction sentence but said Boyle’s prosecution “never should have happened”.
“The Albanese Government must not stand idly by as whistleblowers are punished,” he said.
“They must act with urgent law reform and the establishment of a Whistleblower Protection Authority, to ensure prosecutions like this never happen again.”
Rex Patrick, a former Centre Alliance senator who publicly supported Boyle through his case, described the former ATO staff member as a “hero” whose ultimately changed how the tax office operates.
“There was no malice involved, and, on balance, only good has come from it, except to Richard and his family,” he said.
Barrister Lauren Gavranich, who has represented Boyle since 2019, said his legal team’s failed attempts to shield him from prosecution under whistleblower protections show the need for further reform.
Legislative change is required “for those who have the courage to blow the whistle on wrongdoing within the public sector and to afford adequate protections for their conduct,” she wrote on social media.
In a statement provided to the Sydney Morning Herald, an ATO spokesperson said the tax office “acknowledges the sentencing decision in the case of former ATO employee Richard Boyle”.
