Years of missed tax returns, financial abuse, bewilderment, anxiety: clients of Charles Darwin University’s Free Tax Clinic arrive with all manner of financial problems. The clinic assists Northern Territory residents who need help with their tax affairs and can’t afford professional tax advice. One of the clinic’s clients hadn’t filed a tax return for 10 years, so staff and students at the clinic helped him with the time-consuming and complicated task of sorting out years of paperwork to file hard-copy tax returns for the first five years, and then helped him get his documents in shape to file the final five years of returns online.
“Some of our complicated clients haven’t lodged tax returns for years,” says Tax Clinic program director, Associate Professor Raul David. “We also have some clients who were victims of financial abuse.”
Established in 2019 with the support of the Australian Taxation Office, the clinic provides free and independent tax advice to anyone in the Northern Territory who doesn’t have the means to pay a professional accountant.
The dozen or so Charles Darwin University students who help with the clinic annually are supervised by both university academics and professional Darwin-based accountants.
About 20 per cent of the tax clients are Indigenous, living both in Darwin and in distant communities visited by the clinic on a regular basis. Many have never claimed refunds owed to them by the ATO because the whole process of filing a tax return just seemed too hard, Associate Professor David says.
The clients might have trouble finding suitable identity documents; they might have only limited access to the internet; and they are often wary of all government officialdom.
Many have either unclaimed refunds or growing tax debt.
The clinic also provides refugees and migrant communities in the Territory with free and impartial tax advice. In 2025, more than 500 clients were given free tax assistance at the clinic, including 110 small businesses and charities in Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs, along with residents of Indigenous communities in Croker Island, Ramingining, Wadeye and other remote regions.
The advice is delivered in more than 15 languages, says Associate Professor David, including Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Arabic, Swahili, Lingala, Mandarin, Cantonese and Vietnamese.
Visits to Indigenous communities is in partnership with the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation – and, on occasion, an ALPA agent will travel with the tax clinic to ensure there is smooth communication.
Students working with the clinic are taught to take great care dealing with Indigenous clients, many of whom distrust the government generally and more specifically fear the ATO.
“We have to assure them we are not agents of the ATO, that we are independent, and separate from the ATO,” Associate Professor David says.
The students’ confidence and ability to communicate with different types of clients improves as they spend more time with the clinic, he adds.
“Sometimes the clients don’t really want to talk, because they don’t trust the system,” he adds.
“So we have to ensure we make them feel comfortable and let them know that we are not here to judge, we are here to help them and resolve the issue.”