Coffee king and lover of the high life Rob Maisano is being pursued over a $500,000 tax bill
COFFEE entrepreneur Rob Maisano lived in the fast lane, racing cars and boats, but the taxman claims he is not up to speed with paying tax and wants $500,000.
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COFFEE king Rob Maisano has always pursued the finer things in life — but now he is being chased, by the taxman.
While living life in the fast lane — racing cars and boats and hurtling down ski slopes — he has been snail-like in paying his taxes.
The Australian Taxation Office claims the 44-year-old coffee entrepreneur hasn’t been up to speed on his tax for a decade.
In a statement of claim lodged in the County Court, the ATO claims the Toorak-based collector of exotic cars now owes $500,000 in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest.
It’s a claim Mr Maisano hotly disputes, accusing the ATO of tax office of welching on deals going back a decade and simply “getting figures wrong”.
Maisano admits “a few bad years” during which he says he negotiated substantial discounts on outstanding taxes and late payment penalties in return for paying off large sums of his debt.
“I know I owe an amount, no problem, I’ll pay what I owe.” he told the Sunday Herald Sun from Los Angeles.
“My argument (with the ATO) is, charge me correctly and I’ll pay it. If I do a deal with you and you say give me $50,000 today and I’ll knock off $10,000, done deal. But don’t ring me 10 years later and say you’ve got to give us that $10,000 again now, that’s bulls — t.”
Maisano made his name as a coffee supplier, with his business, The Coffee Company, and his fortune expanding rapidly in the 2000s.
Maisano Coffee Concepts became Australia’s biggest event coffee caterer before it was sold off in 2008, and in 2010 Maisano even launched espresso bars and a mobile coffee cart business in Singapore.
Maisano is still big on beans, with a half share in Event Coffee Solutions, which hires out coffee carts for events and sells coffee machines under the Coffee Machine Warehouse name here and in Thailand, the USA and Singapore.
The ATO is seeking $243,330 in unpaid income taxes and late payment fees dating back to June 2007; $181,425 in BAS debt plus penalty interest payments; $1123 in penalties; plus interest and costs.
Maisano said the ATO claim included most of his $222,000 tax bill for 2017, which he had previously agreed to pay in monthly instalments, and wrongly stated he had already paid $70,000 of this amount, claiming that on the day he received the writ he had paid only two instalments totalling just $18,000.
He claims more than half the alleged BAS debt had also been previously forgiven.
A regular in the celebrity pages, the “suave man about town” also ventured into 47 restaurants, including Sabre Cafe in Port Melbourne, Cafe Torino in Altona and Snow Pony at Mt Buller, property developments, and even a luxury car dealership.
The restaurants and car dealership are gone but he also has a third share in Automotive Importing, which markets a permanent tyre gloss.
A big James Bond fan, Maisano proudly showed off his new handcrafted charcoal 2006 V8 Vantage Aston Martin in 2007.
``If my personality was anything like what that car represents, then I would have to be a pretty good bloke,’’ he said at the time.
He also turned his collection of luxury cars into an exclusive rental business for those dreaming of getting behind the wheel of a Ferrari, Maserati or Lamborghini. Club Corsa, as the business was marketed, was deregistered in 2012.
Maisano’s other interests include cooking Italian, travelling and collecting heritage numberplates.
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