In this article, the authors discuss a recent Australian High Court case and argue that Australia's legislative framework dictating the distinction between capital and current expenses is inadequate and poses unnecessary judicial roadblocks.The High Court of Australia's October 16 decision in...

Business tax reform in Australia. Includes analysis by local and overseas industry experts of past tax reforms, our current business tax system and potential future developments as canvassed by the Australian Government's Future Tax System Review (Henry Review)

One of the fundamental aims of any income tax system is to measure the net income earned by taxpayers during a given financial year. This can be difficult for primary production businesses involving live animals because animals are inherently different from other kinds of assets. Whereas...

The OECD recommended various rules that countries can adopt to combat hybrid mismatch arrangements in their domestic tax system. However, its success would not come when the integrity measure, namely “imported mismatch rules”, does not operate as intended. This article examines how the...

The controlled foreign company (CFC) regime operates to overcome the situation where resident investors defer or avoid paying tax on their foreign sourced income by retaining profits within their controlled companies abroad. However, its prescriptive approach is concerning as we enter the...

In Australia, the cost of repairing an asset used to produce assessable income is immediately deductible under s 25-10 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. To claim this deduction, the repairs must not be of a capital nature. The courts have developed three tests to distinguish repair costs...