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Australia's new Public Country-by-Country reporting law, effective 1 July 2024, mandates multinationals to disclose financial activities, tax practices, and profit allocation per country.

On 9 August 2024, the ATO sought to appeal a decision exempting PepsiCo from RWHT, highlighting its focus on taxing embedded royalties, IP, and applying DPT.

The ATO has finalised PCG 2024/1, a framework to assess risk of ATO applying anti-avoidance or transfer pricing rules to intangible assets.

STAI, a SingTel subsidiary, lost its court appeal, highlighting ATO’s focus on tax avoidance. STAI owes ATO $268m in tax and $125m in penalties due to debt deductions. The court found STAI paid excessive interest, benefiting SingTel.

The ATO has been undertaking assurance reviews as part of its Tax Avoidance Taskforce since 2016. These reviews are designed to provide assurance to the Government and the business community that taxpayers are meeting their tax obligations.

PepsiCo appealed a court decision that found it owed the ATO AUD 3.6m in royalty withholding tax for FY 2018 and 2019.

As part of the recently introduced Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share – Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023 in Australian Parliament, the Federal Government has released an Exposure Draft dealing with Multinational tax transparency.

The ATO has released the revised Draft Practical Compliance Guideline PCG 2023/D2, outlining the compliance approach to intangibles arrangements involving international related parties, addressing the tax issues associated with restructures (“migration”) or mischaracterisation of Australian activities in connection with intangible assets.

In an increasingly digitised global world, technology is omni-present, transcends geographic boundaries, and influences every aspect of 21st century life. With this rapid change, invisible assets, or intangible assets (“intangibles”) are progressively more important value drivers for many Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). These intangibles have become the focus of tax controversy worldwide.

Supply chain pressures are not unique to multinational enterprises (MNEs). But when combined with trade protectionism measures, evolving international tax policies, and technological disruption, the current global pandemic has created the perfect storm. The COVID-19 crisis has had an unprecedented impact on international supply chains – from delays in production and logistics, through to loss of confidence in global networks, supply chains have been well and truly tested.

On 5 April 2019, the ATO released Draft Taxation Ruling, TR 2019/D2 to clarify how entities should utilise the ALDT (“the ALDT Draft Ruling”). This ruling applies retrospectively.

The Tax Law Amendment (Combating multinational Tax Avoidance) Bill 2015 (“MAAL”) casts the spotlight onto corporate activity that encourages the reduction of tax liabilities in Australia.