Month: December 2013
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You think tax rates are bad in Australia?
Following the highest court in France upholding a 75% tax rate for incomes over €1 million, I started to look at whether I should start consulting in French… Un bagette merci… First, the 75% tax rate is payable where a group of employers pays an employee over €1 million and is payable BY THE EMPLOYER! […]
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Government operating at its best
After answering six months of letters to a Minister in the last government this is exactly what you come across every day…
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The middle class welfare myth
Solve all our economic problems by cutting middle class welfare! Anyone who says this has never thought any more about this than whether the slogan sounds good… The Facts When people speak of middle class welfare, if they have any idea what they are talking about at all, they are generally talking about Family Tax […]
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What a great use of the Court’s time…
After the AAT and the Federal Court had a go, in November the High Court, the best jurisprudential minds, with combined experience of over a century, had a really useful challenge. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Federal Court both (with the exception of Dodds-Streeton J) found that Sea Shepherd did not provide ‘short-term direct […]
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Luxury cars and hire purchase
Most luxury cars are financed in some way or another – although a car salesman friend of mine says a man wanted to buy his $80,000 BMW with cash, real notes. Maybe the car was still financed in some way (like mafia financed…). But this does beg a tax question? Does the luxury car tax […]
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Is Australia a high or a low taxed country?
High or low is a relative measure. So if we compare ourselves to the Saudis we are a high taxed country but if we compare ourselves to the scandinavians we are in easy street. The economist tell me we should compare ourselves to the OECD and when we do we are low taxed – http://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenues-continue-to-rise-across-the-oecd.htm. […]
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Asset allocation in an SMSF
I spend a lot of time with financial planners – normally at conferences where planners often have a cleansing ale or seven… And they always ask what I am investing in personally.Why do they think a tax nerd knows anything about asset allocation… But i like to pretend I don’t put it all in listed […]
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A quick lesson in statutory interpretation from the Commissioner…
I can’t believe I just wrote this heading given I just won an AAT case (they conceded) that trust beneficiaries are taxed on present entitlements and not payment… I am not kidding, they denied interest deductions for a year as there was no payment only a present entitlement. But in draft Taxation Ruling TR2013/D8 – […]
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Announced but unenacted… a bit of clarity
In November the government announced (see http://axs.ministers.treasury.gov.au/media-release/003-2013/) it was not going ahead with caping self education deduction (limiting section 8-1 makes no sense), limiting the tax exemption on super pensions (impossible to calculate), removing section 25-90 (let the big end of town suffer) and repealing the statutory rate (pure politics in this – this is […]
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Federal Court v High Court… Battle lines drawn
I was going to write a blog on the tax High Court decisions in 2013, but I started to notice a trend, and a worrying trend at that. In the Unit Trend case the High Court overturned a Federal Court decision that the GST anti avoidance rules in Division 165 did not apply. The facts were that […]
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