Australian Law/Tax avoidance

Completion status: Deliberately incomplete for educational purposes.

TODO: Flesh out skeleton

History of tax avoidance

See the book Boucher, 'Blatant, artificial and contrived: Tax schemes of the 70s and 80s' (2010) [1].

Anti-avoidance laws

Part IVA (1981-)

Counterparts to Part IVA with similar, but not identical, provisions exist in relation to taxes other than income tax, e.g.:

• A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999 (Cth), Div 165
• Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act 1986 (Cth), s 67

Major tax avoidance cases

This section describes (or links to descriptions of) court cases where anti-avoidance provisions were argued, discussing them in terms of what flaws or issues in the substantive tax legislation were being exploited.

(TODO)

• DFCT v Purcell (1921) 29 CLR 464
• Davis v FCT 89 ATC 4377
• FCT v Westraders (1980) 144 CLR 55
• Investment & Merchant Finance Corp Ltd v FCT (1971) 125 CLR 249
• Slutzkin v FCT (1977) 140 CLR 314
• Brambles Holdings v FCT (1977) 138 CLR 467
• WP Keighery Pty Ltd v FCT (1957) 100 CLR 66
• Mullens (1976) 135 CLR 290
• Cridland (1977) 140 CLR 330
• FCT v Gulland (1985) 160 CLR 55
• FCT v Kareena Hospital Pty Ltd (1979) 10 ATR 525
• Bayly v FCT (1977) 7 ATR 215
• Jones v FCT (1977) 7 ATR 229
• Curran v FCT (____) 131 CLR 409
• John v FCT (1989) 20 ATR 1
• IRC v Duke of Westminster - not an Australian case, but often cited in discussions of tax avoidance in Australia, so useful to analyse by the same methods as the Australian cases
• Richard Walter v FCT (1995) 31 ATR 95
• Newton v FCT (1958) 98 CLR 1
• Case W58 (1989) 89 ATC 538
• Howland-Rose v FCT [2002] FCA 246 (the 'Budplan' case)
• FCT v Peabody
• FCT v Spotless Services Ltd
• Eastern Nitrogen v FCT
• FCT v Hart
• FCT v Consolidated Press