The information on the ATO website, on Capital gains withholding clearance certificate application online form and instructions – for Australian residents, has been updated by the ATO. It notes that, if a corporate trustee does not have a TFN, an attachment can be included to provide the details of the relevant trust. The updated page, on…
On 12 February 2018, Treasury released an exposure draft of legislation to extend the application of the Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law (MAAL) to capture the use of certain trusts and partnerships that may otherwise circumvent the MAAL. This measure was announced in the 2017-18 Federal budget (in May 2017). The MAAL is located in Part IVA of the…
On 13 Feb 2018, the ATO issued its first Tax Alert for the 2018 year: TA 2018/1. It says that the ATO are reviewing arrangements that are intended to provide imputation benefits to Australian taxpayers who are not the true economic owners of the shares. Arrangements the Alert does apply to The ATO give an…
On Wed 14 Feb 2018, the Board of Taxation released its report Review of the Tax Treatment of Bare Trusts and Similar Arrangements to the public. The Board’s review was completed in June 2017. The Revenue Minister said the Board of Taxation has identified opportunities to simplify arrangements where the trustee has no or only minor powers of…
On 12 Feb 2018, the ATO announced that edited versions, of Private Binding Rulings (EVs), are now available in the ATO Legal database (this produces a ‘search box’ and you can ‘refine search’ by ‘edited private advice’ to get all the EV’s on the subject matter for which you were searching). Moving them to the ATO…
The following Product Rulings were released by the ATO on Wed 14.2.2018: PR 2018/1 – Tax consequences of investing in the HSBC UCITS Common Contractual Fund. This ruling provides that the relationship between the fund manager and unit holders constitutes a trust and that the share of the net income of the trust to which…
On 14 Feb 2018, the ATO issued Taxation Ruling TR 2018/2 on the record-keeping obligations of business taxpayers (individuals and companies) where records are kept in electronic form. The ruling contains a series of principles about electronic record-keeping. These principles are that: electronic records are recognised as documents for tax law purposes (Section 2B of…
On 14 February 2018, the ATO issued a statement (on its website) seeking to assure taxpayers that it was well placed, after various ‘BEPS’ initiatives, to ensure that companies, including particularly big companies, were paying ‘appropriate’ amounts of Australian income tax. The ATO also wants to advise that it is already getting on top of…
The AAT has set aside a departure prohibition order (DPO), against a taxpayer, who had become bankrupt, as the DPO was no longer serving its purpose. The Commissioner issued assessments to the taxpayer/applicant totalling about $1.7m (for the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008 years). They arose out of money transferred to Vanuatu and they alleged…
On 28.2.18, ASIC announced that had disqualified Robert Mark Taylor, of New South Wales, from being an approved self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) auditor for breaching fundamental independence requirements. ASIC found that Mr Taylor had breached the auditor independence requirements of APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants in auditing his own fund, the fund…