On 17.12.2021, The Tax & Transfers Public Institute posted an article by Christine Peacock entitled ‘What does it take to make a house new?’ Citing her peer reviewed article, she advocates a statutory solution based on the system in Canada. It is based on the cost of the work done, to the residential premises, adds…
20/01/2022 – The OECD released the 2022 edition of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations. The OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines provide guidance on the application of the “arm’s length principle”, which represents the international consensus on the valuation, for income tax purposes, of cross-border transactions between associated enterprises. In today’s economy…
The Inspector General of Taxation is conducting 3 investigations and seeking submissions on the ATO’s (1) management of objections; (2) exercise of its (unappealable) general powers of administration; and (3) exercise of the Remedial Power. Submissions are due by 28 March and also 28 February 2022. (1) The ATO’s Management of Objections. The IGTO…
On Friday 21. January 2022, the Institute of Actuaries of Australia released its submissions suggesting possible improvements to the ATO’s YourSuper Comparison Tool. The Institute said it supports the online Comparison Tool, but its key suggestions include: (i) splitting out investment and administration fees; (ii) initial ranking by net investment performance (not by fees); and…
THE TAX INSTITUTE posted its State of Policy Report: December 2021, on Friday 21.1.2022, noting – Keeping up to date with the latest developments in changing legislation can be a challenge at the best of times and may be especially hard if you’ve just returned from a well-deserved end of year break. Our State of Tax…
Here’s one that could have ‘slipped under the [tax] radar’. On 5 Dec 2021, the Department of Home Affairs issued a discussion paper called: Reform of Australia’s electronic surveillance framework., which calls for submissions from the public by 11 Feb 2022. This has relevance to tax in that there is a proposal that the ATO get…
On 14 Jan 2022, the Commissioner posted an article saying that McDonald’s Australia had been convicted and fined, that day, for failing to provide documents to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). This conviction seems to have something to do with the Mussalli decision, where prepayments of rent, to McDonalds were held to be on capital…
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal has held that prosecuting authorities were able to use information obtained 12 years earlier, in an examination of an individual under s264 of the ITAA 1936, in the course of prosecuting the taxpayer for various dishonesty related offences. The s264 examination arose in the course of the Commissioner’s ‘Project Wickenby’…
The Government is seeking stakeholder views on exposure draft legislation that increases the rights of small businesses to contest the ATO’s collection of disputed tax debts in the AAT. In the 2021‑22 Budget the Government announced that it would extend the power of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to pause or modify ATO debt recovery action…
In the beginning of December 2021, the Federal Court has ruled that certain assets of two undischarged bankrupts were not held in their self-managed super fund (SMSF) so that the assets were divisible among the creditors of their bankrupt estates. I note this is a long judgement (751 paragraphs) covering many issues. The facts were…