Monday, May 11, 2015

Riskiest Subjects

"I mean, I think I'm already bored," Mr Mike Baird said.
- today at LC Committee

Mr Stoner, who quit politics at the March 28 election for family reasons, has taken a role as "senior adviser" to investment bank Moelis Australia, with whom he had dealings while in office in relation to a visa program aimed at wealthy Chinese investors. Andrew Stoner is no longer bored

Mr Jeremy Hirschhorn said the Tax Office looked closely at group restructures and when tax benefits of a deal outweighed the corporate benefits of a deal, the ATO sought to apply Part IVA tax avoidance provisions.
"In the public domain, we have pursued those sorts of arguments against News Corp on previous restructures and indeed have on occasion been unsuccessful in applying part IVA on the basis that there was a dominant commercial purpose rather than a dominant tax purposes.
"Part IVA has recently changed and that stops taxpayers arguing that they would not have done the transaction at all."
That was a common defence claimed by corporates, he said.
"They said: 'We would not have done the transaction at all if there had been a tax cost.' Part IVA has recently changed and no doubt in the near future there will be cases in which the Tax Office seeks to argue the new part IVA against things like corporate restructures."
Rupert Murdoch's news corp is ATO's top tax risk

Iconic assets will be sold and government departments will be slashed in a new effort to reduce the size of the public sector and raise more than $4 billion, in contentious reforms to be revealed in tomorrow’s federal budget.
Budget Cuts

New South Wales Premier Mike Baird has been grilled at a parliamentary inquiry into the planned lease of the electricity network about contact his staff had with UBS before the bank favourably altered its report into the power sale.
Mr Baird told the inquiry his chief of staff and director of policy raised concerns with the head of UBS after it issued a report during the election campaign that said the sale was "bad for the budget, good for the state
The Premier said he was briefed on the matter, but his staff did not ask for the report to be reissued with the words "bad for the state" removed
Truth About Poles

The stay-at-home mum, once adored and protected by the Howard government, will be prodded off her pedestal and into the workforce.
She will be “penalised”, something John Howard said he would never do
 Family of Truth Abbott v Howard

'Excellent conference. Wide range of very knowledgeable and engaging speakers'
Prosecutions Manager NSW/ACT, Australian Taxation Office
Microsite

Taxing Times at Latitude East