The Federal Court has dismissed a taxpayer’s application for leave to appeal from the decision in DCT v Hua Wang Bank Berhad (No 3) & Ors [2012] FCA 594 in which the Federal Court refused to grant the taxpayer a stay of enforcement of a summary judgment obtained by the Commissioner against the taxpayer for…
The AAT has held that a taxpayer had not discharged his burden of proving that an assessment was excessive, and effectively held that he was an Australian “resident” in the 2011 income year. The facts were as follows. The taxpayer is an engineer and was born in India and remains an Indian citizen. He came…
The AAT has affirmed the Commissioner’s views and held that employee share scheme awards received by a taxpayer should be treated as qualifying rights and therefore assessable, and that penalties imposed by the Commissioner should be upheld. The taxpayer was at all material times a senior officer in the Australian subsidiary of a large multi-national…
The Federal Court has dismissed 4 taxpayers’ applications for leave to appeal from the 21 December 2012 decision of Perram J in DCT v Hua Wang Bank Berhad (No 4) [2012] FCA 1482. In that decision, the taxpayers were unsuccessful in their applications for the GIC component of an earlier summary judgment against them to be dismissed. That…
The Government has released a Discussion Paper seeking comments on its proposal to introduce a $2,000 cap on tax deduction claims for work-related self-education expenses per person from 1 July 2014. The proposal was announced by the Treasurer on 13 April 2013 “as part of a package of reforms to make a down-payment on the National Plan for School…
The High Court has dismissed the Commissioner’s application for special leave to appeal against the decision of the Full Federal Court in FCT v Crown Insurance Services Ltd [2012] FCAFC 153. The Full Federal Court had dismissed the Commissioner’s appeal from a 2011 AAT decision that held that insurance premium income derived by a non-resident…
On 12 June 2013, the Government released Advancing Australia as a Digital Economy: Update to the National Digital Economy Strategy. A copy of the update is available on the National Broadband Network website. As part of this process, the Government announced that it would review the policy settings around employee share schemes (ESS). Treasury announced on Tues…
The Government Mon 3.6.2013, released a Discussion Paper on Preventing dividend washing. In the 2013-14 Federal Budget on 14 May 2013, the Government announced reforms to close, with effect from 1 July 2013, a loophole it said currently enabled sophisticated investors to engage in so-called “dividend washing”. The Government said this was a process that allowed sophisticated investors to…
The High Court has refused applications by the taxpayer for special leave to appeal against the decisions of the Full Federal Court in Weeks v FCT [2013] FCAFC 2 and Weeks v FCT and Commonwealth of Australia [2013] FCAFC 78. In the first case, the Court had confirmed that a termination payment made to the…
A full court of the High Court on Wed 5.6.2013, unanimously dismissed the appeallant’s appeal against his conviction in the NSW Supreme Court for conspiring to dishonestly cause a loss to the Commonwealth, contrary to s 135.4(5) of the Criminal Code (Cth). The appeallant was charged with 2 counts of conspiracy, both of which arose out…