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Are you a Director? Has your company met its PAYG, GST and Superannuation obligations? If not, you could be personally liable for these amounts.

Last week the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) released the key observations from its thematic review of related party outsourcing arrangements across a sample of 10 retail superannuation trustees with outsourcing contracts worth a combined $1.2 billion annually.

On 6 October 2022, the ATO released Draft Taxation Ruling TR 2022/D2 Income Tax: residency tests for individuals. TR 2022/D2 has consolidated and replaced previous ATO rulings, TR 98/17 and IT 2650 (both withdrawn effective 6 October 2022) on the ATO’s interpretation of the residency rules as set out in Section 6(1) of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936.

On 21 September 2022 a case was released outlining that on 13 July 2022, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) determined that the taxpayer was unable to show that activities were eligible R&D activities for income tax purposes. In doing that, the AAT affirmed the previous decision by ISA.

The ATO has released a draft Margin Scheme Valuation Requirements Determination for comment. While it’s substantially similar to the current determination, its differences may cause issues for property developers.

From 29 September 2022, the temporary halving of fuel excise announced as part of the FY22/23 budget will end.

Since March 2022, existing .au registrants were eligible for the Priority Allocation Process, enabling them to apply for priority status of a direct .au domain name matching their pre-existing domain name. After 20 September 2022, direct .au domain names that have not been registered will be available to the general public.

The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) has confirmed that from 1 July 2022, licensees must provide the QBCC with General Purpose Financial Statements (GPFS) when either submitting a Minimum Financial Requirements (MFR) Report to adjust reported Net Tangible Assets (NTA) or Allowable Annual Turnover; or complying with annual reporting requirements (if licence categories 4-7). The changes mean that licensees wishing to adjust their NTA and/or approved turnover should ensure an MFR Report is signed before 31 October 2022 and lodged with the QBCC before 30 November 2022.

The Labor Government has followed through on its election commitment of a multinational tax integrity package to target the tax loopholes used by multinational enterprises (MNEs) and to improve tax transparency, with the release of Treasury’s Discussion Paper on 5 August 2022.

On 1 August 2022, Treasury released draft legislation to prevent the taxation by Australia of Indian resident firms providing certain technical services performed outside Australia to Australian customers.

Yesterday the Australian Capital Territory’s (ACT) Chief Minister Andrew Barr handed down the ACT budget.

The ATO has recently announced that they have now re-commenced issuing requests to release excess contributions and other charges for superannuation fund members who did not make an election on how they would like to treat their excess non-concessional contributions for prior financial years.