Paralysed man stands again after receiving ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells Nature
The ATO has provided an update on its blueprint for creating a more streamlined, digitalised tax experience, called Tax Administration 3.0, which aims to make it easier for small businesses to meet their obligations.
Speaking at an event yesterday, Michael Morton, assistant commissioner at the ATO, said creating an easier digitalised tax experience for small businesses would help prevent debt, reduce cost and compliance burdens and ensure businesses have certainty that they're meeting their tax obligations correctly.
ATO outlines current focus areas for tax 3.0 plans
The Australia Taxation Office’s deputy commissioner for smarter data, Marek Rucinski, said the ATO is using natural language processing for some time to review large amounts of unstructured data, with the goal of gaining insights and identifying risks that would be impossible for humans to detect due to the volumes and complexity involved.
Signal chat records must be preserved, federal judge tells Trump administration Axios
Oversight Dems ask for multi-inspectors general probe of Trump Cabinet Signal chat The Hill
Democrats seize on Yemen attack leak to press for imperialist war WSWS
WSJ: Israel provided intel for US strike on Houthi official mentioned in Signal chat Times of Israel
Political junkies and the media are obsessed with opinion polls on the relative standings of the political parties. Movements within standard statistical margins of error are treated with great respect.
The prehistoric psychopath Works in Progress. “Life in the state of nature was less violent than you might think. Most of our ancestors avoided conflict. But this made them vulnerable to a few psychopaths.”
Elon Musk’s X Sees Popularity Slide After Election — While Threads, Bluesky Makes Gains
The threat of tariff retaliation from US President Donald Trump has not stopped the Australian Tax Office pursuing US tech companies for additional tax on billions of dollars in revenue. But Australia’s High Court might.
The ATO has confirmed that it is still considering a royalty withholding tax (RWT) that would tax billions of dollars worth of software transactions for the first time – largely targeting US tech companies.
The ATO has been developing a new ruling on payments for software, focusing on what it sees as the substance of what consumers pay for: intellectual property.
The problem for foreign tech groups is that this means a royalty withholding tax (RWT) now applies. For US companies, this would mean the payment received from their distributors would attract a 5 per cent tax if it is deemed to be IP-related, not payment for services.
The ATO’s proposed ruling has been described by US trade groups such as the US National Foreign Trade Council as “gross overreach”.
The draft ruling, first announced in 2021, has already drawn fire from US trades groups and the all-powerful US Treasury which said last year that the proposal would “create a concerning imbalance in the benefits provided under the Australia tax treaty.”
The stakes rose considerably last year with the election of Donald Trump. On the first day of his presidency, Trump threatened punitive new taxes if countries levied “discriminatory or extraterritorial” taxes against US companies.
“Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the United States Trade Representative shall investigate whether any foreign countries are not in compliance with any tax treaty with the United States or have any tax rules in place, or are likely to put tax rules in place, that are extraterritorial or disproportionately affect American companies,” the announcement from Trump said.
US tech giants such as X, Apple, Google and Meta this month also urged Trump to take action against Australia over new federal laws and “coercing” them into sacrificing revenue in schemes such as the News Media Bargaining Incentive.
But the ATO has confirmed that it will wait for a High Court appeal that goes before the court this week over the tax treatment of payments made to soft drink maker PepsiCo.
The tax office is appealing a decision of the Full Federal Court last year which found that PepsiCo was not liable to pay royalty withholding tax on sales of its soft drink concentrate to Schweppes, which bottles and sells PepsiCo soft drinks in Australia, including Pepsi.
In nutshell, PepsiCo won its appeal last year arguing that it was just selling its sugary concentrate to its local bottler, not any IP rights to its product. Although it related to syrup, not software, the same IP and royalty payment issues are at stake in the ATO’s final legal appeal on the matter.
“The ATO has deferred finalising the software royalty draft ruling pending the outcome of the PepsiCo case,” a spokesman said.
The tax office said the PepsiCo case involves embedded royalties, and the High Court’s findings may provide insights that could influence the final ruling on how royalties apply to software arrangements.
“The ATO is awaiting the High Court’s decision to assess any potential impact on its position before finalising the draft ruling on software taxation.”
The hearing is scheduled to be April 2 – just before Trump is scheduled to unveil sweeping tariff increases across its trading partners. Australia could be targeted if it does not back down on these tax matters and perceived trade barriers.
