National Tax Clinic program supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and remote communities
The National Tax Clinic program supports tax clinics in providing outreach tax clinic services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and remote communities. In 2025, grant funding of $200,000 was provided to 6 tax clinics, including Adelaide University, Charles Darwin University, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, James Cook University and the University of Tasmania. Each tax clinic provided critical tax services throughout many rural and remote towns and communities in Western Australia, the Norther Territory, Far North Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. Collectively, 32 tax clinic personnel, registered professionals and students assisted 699 individuals and small businesses to address various tax matters including the completion of 2,513 income tax and business activity statement lodgments across these regions.
Spotlight on the CDU free Tax Clinic, in partnership with SAMAF consultants and ALPA
Your Mob, Your Money: East Arnhem Land Tour
For many Yolnu people living in remote East Arnhem Land, the Australian tax and superannuation system is not just unfamiliar, it is actively inaccessible. Language barriers, digital exclusion, identity document mismatches, and distance from mainstream services mean tax obligations go unresolved and superannuation goes unclaimed, sometimes for decades.
In October 2025, the Charles Darwin University (CDU) Tax Clinic, supported by the Australian Government's First Nations Communities and Remote Communities grant, partnered with the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation (ALPA), Australia’s largest Aboriginal corporation, owned and governed by Yolnu members, to deliver free tax services directly to 2 East Arnhem Land communities: Ramingining and Galiwinku.
Over 5 days from 13 to 17 October 2025, the CDU Tax Clinic team, supervised by SAMAF consultants, delivered face-to-face tax services alongside superannuation fund providers, banks, and financial counsellors. ALPA provided logistical support including charter flights, local coordination, and the cultural trust that made people feel safe to engage.
Across the 5-day tour, the team assisted more than 200 individuals and processed over a thousand tax returns. Many clients had years, in some cases more than 2 decades, of outstanding lodgments. Less than half were nil lodgments, and other part resulted in genuine refunds for community members who had been owed money for years without knowing it.
The most significant barriers encountered were often the simplest to fix in person. A common issue was information mismatch, where the day and month of a date of birth were transposed, or a first and last name were recorded in reverse order between ATO records and other agency records. For someone without digital access or the ability to navigate a phone queue, such errors can make it practically impossible to engage with the tax system at all. Face-to-face service resolved in minutes what would otherwise take hours or never be resolved.
One case from Galiwinku illustrates the cumulative impact of these barriers. A Yolnu community member, referred to here as J.D., had not been able to access a superannuation death benefit left by his brother, who had passed away 9 years earlier. He also had multiple years of outstanding tax returns that had never been lodged. Without in-person services and with significant language and technology barriers, J.D. had been unable to progress either matter.
During Financial Wellness Week in Galiwinku, the CDU Tax Clinic assisted J.D. to lodge his outstanding tax returns and, working in collaboration with superannuation fund providers and Mob Strong Debt Help, supported the finalisation of his brother’s superannuation death benefit claim. J.D. recovered $40,000 in his brother’s name, money that will be shared among the surviving family.
J.D.’s case is not unique. As ALPA’s Community Engagement Manager Eddy Alder observed:
'This is money they’ve earned, this is money they are owed. To be able to support one community member to meet with multiple large institutions is just something that would not happen.'
The Your Mob, Your Money East Arnhem Land Tour demonstrates that tax justice in remote communities requires more than digital platforms or phone services. It requires physical presence, cultural trust, and collaboration between services. ALPA’s decades-long community ownership made attendance possible. The co-location of tax, superannuation, banking, and financial counselling services in one place meant that a single visit could resolve years of unfinished business.
Senior Elder Glen Gurruwiwi put it plainly: 'This is good, you know, it’s fixing up all the problems. It’s helping people because they have been waiting for this.'
Spotlight on the ECU Tax Clinic, in partnership with Broome Circle and the MWW
With funding from the Australian Government First Nations Communities and Remote Communities grant, and assistance from the financial counsellors from the Broome Circle and the Marra Worra Worra Aboriginal Corporation (MWW) in Fitzroy Crossing, the Edith Cown University (ECU) Tax Clinic team made a 5-day trip from 3 August to 9 August 2025 to Broome and Fitzroy Crossing.
The ECU Tax Clinic team delivered record results, assisting over 190 clients, lodging more than 430 tax returns, and securing over $536,000 in refunds for vulnerable community members in that region. There are no tax agents servicing in Fitzroy Crossing. The Broome tax agents can be quite expensive, thus making them unaffordable for low-income community clients. Thus, many community members have a backlog of unlodged tax returns.
The ECU Tax Clinic 5-day outreach trip required at least 3 to 4 months of pre-planning and preparation. The cost and administration constraints permit a team of around 6 ECU Tax Clinic staff and students to undertake the outreach trip. The preparation involves selection of appropriate staff and students for the outreach trip and provide them appropriate tax, cultural and safety training, obtaining university approvals and selecting and booking flights and accommodation. The feedback from the ECU Tax Clinic students after their remote trip has been that the experience has significantly broadened their perspectives and have prepared them for much more than standard taxation practices.
Travel is required from the Broome and Fitzroy Crossing town centre to the very remote communities such as Ardyaloon, Bidyadanga, Djarindjin-Lombadina, Fitzroy Crossing, and Yakanarra that are around 200 to 300 kilometres away, where prior permission is often required to visit those communities. The road journey to the very remote communities can be on narrow unsealed dirt roads, the journey commencing early around 6:00 am with the hope that dirt roads are accessible, so work can commence by 9:00 am. On arrival at the remote communities, challenges can include setting up a mobile tax clinic in hot and dusty conditions and ensuring that there are internet availability and connections. These pressures faced by the clinic staff are compounded if there is a long queue of clients waiting to be served. Assistance was provided by the tax clinic team in a range of local venues, including a roadhouse, a school music room, and community centers.
Challenges and feedback
In many communities, the clients are low-income individuals. Their tax literacy is low, access to affordable tax agents is limited or non-existent, and clients often have years of unlodged tax returns.
Common challenges include:
- lack of tax file numbers or identity documents
- little understanding of tax obligations or entitlements
- no internet or local tax professionals.
Actual feedback voiced by remote clients included:
- 'We don't know what to click on… other Indigenous peoples don't even know how to use myGov or ATO.'
- 'Some questions are a bit hard to understand.'
- 'I can’t afford tax services. That bloke takes a lot of money.'
- Maybe we can learn by a step-by-step guide in a video in different dialects.'
It is hoped that this case study provides a better understanding of vulnerable taxpayers in the Kimberley region and the need to reduce tax vulnerability and enhance compliance assistance for remote Australian communities.