Customers have been paying a surcharge on government transactions for eight years, despite repeated legal advice that the fee was 'unlawful'.
The NSW Ombudsman has been asked to investigate if the former Coalition government ignored repeated legal advice to stop charging an "unlawful" surcharge on government transactions. NSW Minister for Finance Courtney Houssos has referred the matter to the state's Independent Commission Against Corruption to investigate allegations of "possible serious maladministration".
Ms Houssos said that an estimated 92 million transactions were unlawfully incurred with $144 million worth of merchant fees since 2016. "It is a common law principle that government cannot collect a merchant fee or a fee for service unless it has a specific statutory authority to do so." In response to the allegations, former NSW Finance Minister from April 2019 to March 2023, Damien Tudehope said he did not recall receiving that advice but didn't rule out its existence.
Minister for Customer Services Jihad Dib said a specialist task force had since been established and that merchant fees had been wiped off at least 80 per cent of applicable government services."What we have done is looked at switching off the most-high traffic ones and the ones that we do most often," he said.
"I think the other challenging concern is that when Minister Dib turns around and looks at someone to do the taskforce and implement the recommendations, there's not many people left at Service NSW thanks to his government's cuts to the agency," Mr Griffin said.
Illegal Surcharge Nsw Government Service Nsw Transactions Payments
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