Category: Uncategorized
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Fairfax journalist spinning a tax story again…
Why do Fairfax journalist have to exaggerate every tax story they have to push their ideology? Peter Martin is at it again today when he writes… Revealed: how the Tax Commissioner was leant on to deliver high-end tax cuts Mr Martin again is going to show us how the current Government is a friend of…
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What has happened to ATO Interpretative Decisions?
According to the Commissioner, an ATOID is a “summarised version of a decision we have made on the application of the law to a particular situation.” (See PSLA 2001/8) These have been around since 2001 and have been an amazing insight into the types of private rulings that the Commissioner has been giving to specific…
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One of many or just one…
This one is for my Quantity Surveyor friends who love to put together depreciation schedules… The Commissioner has released a draft Taxation Ruling that considers whether a composite item is itself a depreciating asset or whether its components are separate depreciating assets. And this is a great question. How far down do we break something…
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Excuses, excuses…
These are the best 10 excuses for not lodging an individual tax return given to the UK Revenue and Customs in 2016: My tax return was on my yacht, which caught fire. A wasp in my car caused me to have an accident and my tax return, which was inside, was destroyed. My wife helps…
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The End of Salary Packaged Super
From 1 July 2017 I cannot understand why anyone would salary package super in addition to the 9.5% SG their employer is required to pay for them. Now I am not saying that it is not worth using up an employee’s entire $25,000 concessional cap (2017/18 cap amount), but I am saying you are crazy…
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More rubbish about Evil Apple and Taxes
By now most of us have heard that the European Commission has ordered Apple to pay 13 billion Euros. But the money does not go to the EU, but rather the order is that Ireland has to collect the amount from Apple… But Ireland does not want to. Ireland has argued that Apple have paid the…
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Tax laws are back
Sorry about not blogging for a while. But nothing has happened… almost. But now we have a parliament again, tax policy has started and I promise to keep up. So here are what the Government has provided in the last week… Treasury Laws Amendment (Income Tax Relief) Bill 2016 Boring… In this Bill the threshold…
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Vote “1” for tax
When I was interviewed for a job with the Labor party I was asked whether I had ever voted for John Howard. It was a joke question and they did not expect me to answer, but I did. “Of course”, I said confidently, “he has had a better tax policy for some time.” This Saturday…
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R&D concessions go full circle
In the 2014/15 Budget the Government announced they would reduce the tax offset rate for the R&D Tax Incentive by 1.5%. This Bill was introduced in 2015 and has since been blocked by Labor and the cross benchers in the Senate. But, over two years later, Labor has just announced if it wins the election…
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My first Solomon Island post
I am working in Honiara for the Solomon Island government and I was asked to look at the Sales Tax Act. It states there is Sales tax of 50 cents a movie ticket… Except there are no movie theatres in the Solomon Islands. There are only 17 “prescribed goods and services” in the Sales Tax…
