Submissions

The Taxation Institute is the most respected and influential contributor to the development of tax policy and administration in Australia. As part of this contribution, we prepare top level submissions on tax policy, administration and technical matters at both Federal and State levels. Non-confidential submissions prepared from 1996 onwards and covering legislation, ATO and Treasury consultative documents and papers, as well as rulings, determinations and a range of other ATO opinion and guideline documents, are available here.

  • Product Disclosure Statement for superannuation and managed investment product disclosure

    24 Feb 2010

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) is pleased to provide its comments on the draft regulations and an example Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for superannuation and managed investment product disclosure which was released for public comment on 21 December 2009.

    The Taxation Institute is concerned about the incorporation of the information contained in the http://www.superinfo.gov.au/ website by reference. Without seeing the content (the site is not available yet) it is impossible to comment on the content.

  • Letter to Minister Bowen re Excess Superannuation Contributions Tax

    22 Feb 2010

    I refer to our letter dated 10 August 2009 and your reply of 4 February 2010. Our letter followed a meeting with you on 10 July 2009 that related to various superannuation issues of particular concern to our members. The issue of the application of the excess superannuation contributions tax was one of these concerns.

  • Review into Australia’s Superannuation System - Phase Three: Structure (Including SMSFs)

    19 Feb 2010

    The Taxation Institute's submission is not intended to provide an exhaustive response to all of the SMSF-related issues raised by the Phase Three Issues Paper, but rather focuses on the following range of key issues, discussed below:

    • SMSF governance;
    • SMSF operation and efficiency;
    • SMSF investments;
    • SMSF sector participants;
    • SMSF structure;
    • Early release issues; and
    • Life insurance.

  • Draft Taxation Ruling TR 2009/D8 Income Tax: Division 7A loans: trust entitlements

    19 Feb 2010

    Our submission sets out our concerns on the following key issues:

    1. the divergence of the views expressed in the draft Ruling with the underlying policy intent of Division 7A

    2. the application of section two of the draft Ruling concerning the extinguishment of a unpaid present entitlement (UPE) and its conversion into a loan

    3. the application of section three which provides that a subsisting UPE may amount to either the provision of financial accommodation or an in-substance loan under section 109D(3)

    4. the residual application of Subdivision EA; and

    5. certain adverse tax consequences which arise from the draft Ruling.

  • Tax File Number Withholding Arrangements to Closely Held Trusts including Family Trusts

    16 Feb 2010

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) is pleased to provide comments in relation to the exposure draft Exposure Draft Legislation Extending the Tax File Number Withholding (TFN Withholding) Arrangements to Closely Held Trusts including Family Trusts.

    The Taxation Institute notes that the "mischief" intended to be addressed by the legislation as announced by Senator Sherry is to alleviate issues the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has in matching data between Trust distributions and their beneficiaries.

  • Draft Taxation Determination TD 2009/D18 - Income tax: can a private equity entity make an income gain from the disposal of the target assets it has acquired?

    04 Feb 2010

    The Draft TD refers to ‘Private Equity'. The Professional Bodies take this as a reference to the practice of many investors including superannuation and pension funds, insurance funds, mutual funds, sovereign funds and other institutional and non-institutional investors together (in collective investment vehicles) to make specific investments or classes of investment through pooling of investment capital allocated for that purpose. Private equity investment does not involve merely investment banks investing on their own account. Given the wide ambit of the potential application of the Draft TD, a more accurate and descriptive term for such investment activity may be Pooled Fund. That term is used in this submission.

  • Exposure Draft Tax Laws Amendment (Foreign Source Income Deferral) Bill (No.1) 2010

    03 Feb 2010

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) is pleased to provide comments in relation to the exposure draft of the Tax Laws Amendment (Foreign Source Income Deferral Bill (No.1) 2010 released by the Assistant Treasurer on 18 December 2009 (FIF Repeal ED).

    All legislative references are to the provisions of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (ITAA 1936) and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 97) as applicable.

  • Exposure draft legislation - Tax Laws Amendment (2010 Measures No. 1) Bill 2010: Division 7A

    01 Feb 2010

    Generally, the Taxation Institute supports the intent of the proposed amendments and recognises the need to address integrity issues.  However, the Taxation Institute has some real concerns regarding:

    • Multiple taxation of benefits not actually provided;
    • Uncertainty caused by excessive reliance on the formation of opinions by the Commissioner of Taxation (Commissioner);
    • The commencement and application of the proposed legislation;
    • Fairness and equity concerns arising from the different taxation valuation methodologies applied to shareholders compared to employees; and
    • Potential denial of entitlement to the Small Business and General Business Tax Break.

  • 2010-11 Pre-budget Submission

    29 Jan 2010

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) is pleased to provide its response to the Treasurer's Media Release dated 27 November 2009 calling for submissions regarding priorities for the 2010-11 Budget. The Taxation Institute has summarised the issues which it considers should be a priority for the Government to consider below. These issues are discussed in more detail in the appendix.

  • Managed Investment Trusts - Capital Gains Tax Election

    08 Jan 2010

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) is pleased to provide comments on the exposure draft (ED) and explanatory material (EM) in relation to the election to allow capital gains tax to be the primary code for certain disposals by managed investment trusts.

    The Taxation Institute welcomes the proposal to allow managed investment trusts (MITs) to make an election to treat gains and losses on disposal of certain investments on capital account for taxation purposes.

  • Review of Employee Share Schemes

    15 Oct 2009

    Following the Board of Taxation's (Board) request for submissions regarding the taxation of employee share schemes, the Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) welcomes the opportunity to provide comments for the Board's consideration. The comments focus on:

    • how best to determine the market value of employee share scheme securities; and
    • whether shares and rights under an employee share scheme that are provided by start-up, research and development and speculative-type companies should be subject to separate tax deferral arrangements outside of those proposed by the Policy Statement.

  • Income Tax Consolidation – Exposure Draft legislation

    13 Oct 2009

    We are writing to highlight for you some important upcoming decisions as part of the delivery of the unlegislated tax consolidation measures being developed by Treasury. We are ready to discuss these with your office and Treasury in due course.

    The majority of the unlegislated measures, which cover a seven year period and were mentioned in the 2008 Budget, are in the Exposure Draft legislation ("this ED") released for public comment on 28 April 2009. Representatives of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Taxation Institute of Australia (the Joint Bodies) have been consulting on these issues since 2002, including the lodgement of various joint submissions.

  • Company Losses amendments

    12 Oct 2009

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) welcomes the opportunity to provide comments on the exposure draft of the Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Measures No. 6) Bill 2009 and the related explanatory memorandum (Exposure Draft Material). The Exposure Draft Material concerns changes to permit company losses to be deducted where the current rules may deny loss deductions in situations where not all of the shares carry the same rights to dividends, return of capital or voting.

  • Trust cloning amendments

    29 Sep 2009

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) welcomes the opportunity to provide comments on the exposure draft of the Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Measures No. 6) Bill 2009 and the related explanatory memorandum (Exposure Draft Material). The Exposure Draft Material concerns the abolition of the trust cloning exception and providing rollover relief for fixed trusts.

  • Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Budget Measures No. 2) Bill 2009 (Exposure Draft)

    22 Sep 2009

    The Taxation Institute has concerns regarding the transition of certain shares and rights acquired before 1 July 2009 into the new rules. The Taxation Institute also has concerns regarding some aspects of the drafting as it creates uncertainty. These concerns are discussed in detail below.

  • Submissions re Review of the Application of GST to Cross-Border Transactions Discussion Paper July 2009

    11 Sep 2009

    This submission addresses each of the questions in the Issues Paper, namely, those questions in chapters 4, 5 and 6 (also summarised in Appendix B) and, for ease of reference, adopts the same numbering. In addition to this submission, the Taxation Institute refers to the Taxation Institute's earlier submission in relation to the Review of the Legal Framework for the Administration of the Goods and Services Tax in respect of "International Issues" and an extract of those submissions is enclosed for the Board's reference in respect of this review.

  • Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Budget Measures No. 2) Bill 2009

    01 Sep 2009

    In summary, the Taxation Institute's position is that the legislation released in exposure draft form needs further work. It is hoped this work is undertaken before the Bill is introduced into Parliament. In its current form the Bill is difficult to interpret, uses some terms inconsistently and contains potential flaws of application. The introduction of safe harbour rules would also reduce the administrative burdens imposed by the proposed legislation on employers and employees.

  • Reinvigorating the Public Rulings System for Income Tax

    01 Sep 2009

    In response to the discussion at 17 June 2009 NTLG meeting surrounding the Public Ruling Steering Committee update (Item 18) the Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) has considered the public rulings program and the role of the steering committee in supporting the program. In particular the Taxation Institute's NSW Technical Committee (Technical Committee) canvassed a number of issues with a view to eliciting better value from the public rulings program. The following observations and suggestions are provided for the purposes of discussion at the NTLG Public Rulings Steering Committee's extraordinary meeting on 11 September 2009.

  • Tax Laws Amendment (2009 Measures No. 6) Bill 2009: Loss roll-over for merging superannuation funds

    26 Aug 2009

    The proposed relief will greatly assist merging funds which would otherwise face the loss of potential benefits from realised and unrealised losses on their investments. The Taxation Institute welcomes the extension of the relief to revenue losses, and to situations where Pooled Superannuation Trusts (PST) and life company investments are held by merging funds or their successor funds.

  • Tax Agent Services Regulation 2009

    25 Aug 2009

    The Taxation Institute's submission addresses three key concerns before dealing with a range of other issues that require clarification. In relation to the three key concerns the Taxation Institute notes that it has received correspondence from several members who are concerned at the position adopted in the draft and the possible detrimental affect on their businesses. Given that this is the first time that specialists are being recognised, it is essential that they do not feel disadvantaged on transition to the new regime. 

  • Excess Non-Concessional Contributions Tax Assessments for the 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 Years

    18 Aug 2009

    The Taxation Institute of Australia (Taxation Institute) refers to correspondence from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to a number of taxpayers in March 2009 relating to excess contributions tax. These letters were headed "You may have to pay excess contributions tax: For your information and action". The letters advised the taxpayer that the ATO had contributions information for the above years as specified in an attached schedule. The taxpayer was required to review the information and contact the ATO if they believed the information held by the ATO was incorrect.

  • Excess Contributions

    10 Aug 2009

    Further to the Taxation Institute of Australia's (Taxation Institute) meeting with you on Friday 10 July 2009, please find set out below some additional information in relation to three issues which are of particular concern for our members.

    Impact of new contributions caps

    As from 1 July 2009, the concessional contribution cap has been reduced from $50,000 to $25,000 per person.  Further, the transitional concessional contribution cap until 30 June 2012 for persons aged 50 or over has been reduced from $100,000 to $50,000.