The Government is committed to providing more certainty and better outcomes for taxpayers and reducing the regulatory burden on individuals, business and community organisations.
The complexity of Australia’s tax law, combined with evolving business practices, has increasingly led to unintended outcomes. Even though the Commissioner of Taxation endeavours to interpret the law to give effect to its purpose or object, there are instances where this is not possible.
To address this, the Government will provide the Commissioner with a statutory remedial power to allow for a more timely resolution of certain unforeseen or unintended outcomes in the taxation and superannuation law.
This will allow the Commissioner to make a disallowable legislative instrument that will have the effect of modifying the operation of the taxation and superannuation law to ensure the law can be administered to achieve its purpose or object.
There are similar legislative instruments making powers in Commonwealth law currently granted to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and also the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The power will be appropriately limited in its application and will only apply to the extent that it has a beneficial outcome for taxpayers. It will only be available where the modification is not inconsistent with the purpose or object of the law and has no more than a negligible revenue impact. The Commissioner will consult publicly prior to any exercise of the power.
This power provides a mechanism to deal with some aspects of complexity in the tax law, and provides more certainty and better outcomes for taxpayers.