Treasury is seeking submissions on Australia’s future tax treaty negotiation program. Australia’s 44 bilateral tax treaties generally follow the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital, with some variations that are designed to protect Australia’s domestic interests, eg provisions designed to protect Australia’s taxing rights over the exploitation of Australian natural resources. Public…
The Government has committed to introduce an Exploration Development Incentive to encourage investment in small exploration companies undertaking greenfields mineral exploration in Australia from 1 July 2014. Treasury has released a paper providing more detail on the operation of the Incentive to provide certainty for small mineral exploration companies and their investors ahead of the release of…
On 6 November 2013, the Government announced that it would proceed with amendments to the managed investment trust (MIT) withholding tax regime to provide certainty for foreign pension funds. A draft Bill was released today [Fri 11.7.2014] containing amendments to the ITAA 1997 designed to ensure that the foreign pension funds will be able to access the…
The Government introduced the Labor 2013-14 Budget Savings (Measures No 1) Bill 2014 in the House of Reps on Wed 16.7.2014. The Bill proposes to amend the Clean Energy (Income Tax Rates Amendments) Act 2011 to repeal the personal income tax cuts that were legislated to commence on 1 July 2015 eg the increase in the tax-free…
The Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No 4) Bill 2014 was introduced in the House of Reps on Thur 17.7.2014. It makes the following amendments: THIN CAP: (i) tightens the debt limit settings in the thin capitalisation rules to ensure that multinationals do not allocate a disproportionate amount of debt to their Australian…
M o r g a n’ s T a x M o n t h – July 2014 Developments – This is a collection of developments in Australian tax law and practice that occurred in July 2014 and which aims at being of relevance to tax lawyers.* F John Morgan A member of the Victorian…
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has announced that it has instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against Adata Pty Ltd and Adata (Vic) Pty Ltd (together, Adata), alleging that Adata has breached the unsolicited consumer agreement provisions of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). The ACCC said the allegations relate to Adata’s supply of…
Treasury on Thur 19.6.2014, released a discussion paper entitled, Common Reporting Standard for the automatic exchange of tax information. Treasury noted the Common Reporting Standard for the automatic exchange of tax information is a single global standard for financial institutions’ collection of financial account information on account holders who are residents in another jurisdiction, the…
The Corporations Amendment (Streamlining Future of Financial Advice) Regulation 2014 was registered on Mon 30.6.2014, to give effect to the Government’s proposed amendments to the FoFA legislation to implement its 2013 election commitments. The Regulation amends the Corporations Regulations 2001 to implement the time-sensitive FoFA changes until the measures contained in the Corporations Amendment (Streamlining…
The Acting Assistant Treasurer on Fri 20.6.2014, set out how the Government intends to proceed with its proposed amendments to the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) legislation. Senator Cormann said that the Government remains committed to implementing its FoFA amendments which seek to “strike the right balance” between protecting consumers and relieving the regulatory burden…