Question

Discuss the ATO’s ‘Test Case Litigation Program’ explain in detail

Answer 1

Legal database list Australian court and tribunal decisions that involve tax matters. It also provide a compilation of recent case law decisions, listed alphabetically.

Criteria:- For a case to be approved for funding, the case must:

A. Involve issues where there is uncertainty or contention about how the law operates.

B. Be in the public interest to be litigated. Uncertainty or contention about how the law operates means that the law is ambiguous with little or no judicial clarification on the issue, or there is disagreement on what the law means or how it operates. It does not include disputes that depend solely on questions of fact.

They can also understand the rationale underlying the setting in the ATO guidelines:

1.If successful in asserting there was no avoidance, the taxpayer can seek funding in the form of a costs award or possibly by retrospectively applying to the ATO for the grant of test case funding;

2.If unsuccessful, it would generally appear contrary to the public interest for the ATO to provide funding to a taxpayer who has been found to have engaged in tax avoidance behaviour.