Australian Taxation & Compliance Updates

The government has released a consultation paper on its review of the tax deduction rules for non-compulsory uniform expenses. Division 34 of ITAA 1997 provides that employees can only claim a tax deduction for non-compulsory uniform expenses, where employers have the uniform designs approved and entered on the Register of Approved Occupational Clothing by the Secretary of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.

The Commissioner has issued Practical Compliance Guideline PCG 2016/18 which outlines a practical compliance approach for certain countertrade transactions that are GST neutral.

Australia has introduced a new law applying the Australian Goods and Services Tax (GST) to international sales of digital products and services provided to Australian consumers. Under the new law, overseas businesses will be required to pay GST on these sales from 1 July 2017.

Recent changes to Australia’s GST law mean that from 1 October 2016, certain transactions between overseas businesses and Australian businesses will no longer be subject to GST.

From 1 January 2017, the Australian Government will remove the upfront HECS-HELP discount of 10% for eligible students that pay their student contributions upfront and remove the voluntary HELP repayment bonus of 5%.

The ATO has given notice that it will continue to annually acquire data from credit and debit card providers relating to payments to businesses. The ATO will obtain data for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 income years on the identifying details of merchants with credit and debit card merchant facility and the amount and quantity of the transactions processed.

The ATO has given notice of two data matching programs, one relating to online selling and the other to share transactions.