The Family Court of Australia has held that documents filed in a family court matter, which the Commissioner had been given permission to inspect and photocopy by the Court in relation to an audit of the parties for the income years 1991 to 2010, could not be used by the Commissioner for “collateral” tax purposes. The Court arrived at this decision on the basis that the countervailing public interest in maintaining the privacy of the parties to proceedings and to encourage their full and frank disclosure, outweighed the interest the Commissioner had in the matter.
While acknowledging the Commissioner’s special powers to gather and use information to carry out his statutory duties (and, in particular, his duty under s 166 of the ITAA 1936 to make an assessment of taxable from the returns, and from any other information in his possession), the Court concluded there were no “special circumstances” to justify the Commissioner’s release from his implied obligation not to use the information for a purpose unrelated to the litigation before the Court, and that he not made out the case that such “special circumstances” existed.
(FCT & Darling and Anor [2013] FamCA 118, Family Court, Macmillan J, 1 March 2013.)
[LTN 84, 6/5/13]