Reuters has reported “Google has agreed to pay 130 million pounds (A$265 m) in back taxes to Britain, prompting criticism from opposition lawmakers and campaigners who said the “derisory” figure smacked of a “sweetheart deal”. Google, now part of Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), has been under pressure in recent years over its practice of channeling most…
On 27 January 2016, the OECD announced that, as part of it’s member countries’ continuing efforts to boost transparency by multinational enterprises (MNEs), 31 countries[1] (including Australia) signed the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (MCAA) for the automatic exchange of Country-by-Country reports. The signing ceremony marked an important milestone towards implementation of the OECD/G20 BEPS Project…
On 28 January 2016, the European Commission issued a ‘Fact Sheet’ by way of press release, covering the EU’s response to the OECD ‘Base Erosion and Profit Shifting’ (BEPS) recommendation under it’s 15 ‘Action Points’. This Fact Sheet included the following table [though, I’ve added the equivalent Australian measures already in place which included the…
The Full Federal Court has rejected a taxpayer’s appeal against the decision of Jessup J in January 2015 concerning amended assessments. The Federal Court (in Kocharyan v FCT [2015] FCA 13) had rejected all 3 of the taxpayer’s grounds of appeal. The Commissioner had originally denied the taxpayer deductions of close to $1m for the 2006 and 2007 years…
The Federal Court has dismissed a taxpayer’s appeal and held that a debt of $1.1m owed to a related entity should be included in the maximum net asset value (MNAV) test for the purpose of determining if the taxpayer qualified for the CGT small business concessions. In doing so, it dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal from…
The Federal Court has refused an interlocutory application by a taxpayer that the testimony of her and her husband in a tax case be heard by video-link or the testimony be taken by the Court on commission in Hong Kong pursuant to the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 and the Foreign Evidence Act 1994.…
The Federal Court has held that payments made from an overseas company to its Australian subsidiary and another related company were genuine loans and not shams, despite the Commissioner’s claims that the payments were sham transactions used by the controller of the companies to bring into Australia assets held for his benefit and that they…
The AAT has held that a commercial airline pilot who worked overseas for a foreign airline during the income tax years ended 30 June 2010, 30 June 2011, and 30 June 2012 was an Australian resident during those years. The taxpayer claimed he should not have to pay income tax in Australia on the income he earned from his work because…
The AAT has affirmed default assessments and penalties issued by the Commissioner, finding that the taxpayer could not use “threatened” losses from proceedings that had ended over a decade ago to reduce his taxable income to nil. The taxpayer, a barrister, was a member of a partnership, which, through a nominee company, purchased a farm…
The AAT has found that an Australian-based company in an international pharmaceutical research group conducted a core R&D activity when it ran a clinical trial to determine the safety and efficacy of a client’s drug. Innovation Australia refused make an advance finding that the taxpayer’s clinical trial was a core R&D activity after finding that…