Author: Ken Mansell
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A “fairness” tax?
In Belgium they have a tax called a “fairness tax”. It is a 5.5% tax on dividends paid by certain companies – on top of corporate taxes paid. Interestingly it is so “fair” that it is likely to be struck down in both the Belgium Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. So when…
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Uniting Church replacing the Australian Taxation Office
I have never thought that the Uniting Church would be competing with the Australian Taxation Office but now they are… The Uniting Church has reportedly revealed it targeted international mining giant Glencore International with a private investigator to highlight the lack of transparency behind big multinationals. According to The Australian Financial Review, the church said in…
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Is there massive corporate tax avoidance?
Following the most stupid report ever written by the Tax Justice Network, the parliament has decided to review our corporate tax system. Having worked for some of these “evil” ASX listed companies, both internally and externally, I have never seen one of these companies bend the law without getting a ruling from the Commissioner first.…
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Part IVA and the Small Business CGT Concessions
I have been fearing this day for some time. A day when the Commissioner applies the general anti avoidance provision in Part IVA to a taxpayer who arranges a sale of a business to make the most of the Small Business CGT Concessions. We all know how this is done. “Just before” the sale we…
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Queensland. Beautiful one day, tax insanity the next…
The Queensland government raises about $44 billion a year in taxes, fees… About 20% of this amount comes from the GST that is collected by the Federal Government and passed on to the states and territories. This makes the GST almost as large as all the other taxes combined that the Queensland government charges (all…
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Data matching gets all big brother
The Commissioner has announced another data matching program, but this is one is a bit different. The Australian Taxation Office will acquire details of entities from State and Territory motor vehicle registries for the 2013-2014, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 financial years. And with these 2 million records (they are only looking at cars greater than $10,000…
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Tax Impediments Facing Small Business…
The Board of Tax report on Tax Impediments Facing Small Business has been made public. This report, and the Government’s response make some interesting reading. What do you think about: “Based on an analysis of business population data, the Board recommends that the small business entity turnover threshold be increased to at least $3 million and investigate the feasibility…
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You win some, you lose some… and I am a bad loser…
I have patted myself on the back before for an AAT decision on FBT at my local airport. I may have congratulated myself a bit early as in Commissioner of Taxation v Qantas Airways Limited [2014] FCAFC 168 the Full Federal Court overturned there being no car parking FBT for employers who provide car parking for…
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The biggest share data match ever…
The Commissioner has announced the largest data-matching program regarding details of share transactions from share registries for the period 20 September 1985 to 30 June 2016. That is right, from 20 September 1985! Over 95 million records and 1.2 million individuals … He is looking for: Identify tax returns that may not include accurate information relating to the disposal of…
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Start up Employee share scheme just got fun….
We have blogged about this before but we now have some draft legislation that will make 1 July 2015 lots of fun for advice to start up companies. While this draft legislation makes other changes as well**, this will also make remunerating certain employers lots of fun. These Start up companies will be able to…
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