A more general account of the legal struggles to determine whether, and to what extent, schemes were successful in achieving their tax saving purpose. The focus is on paper schemes of avoidance, the impact of penalties and the reluctance of taxpayers to be seen in court.
Once the presence of a scheme in a taxpayer's return was detected, the ATO swung into resistance mode. In the earliest days this involved working out by enquiry in each case the key elements of the scheme. Action by investigation officers was required, and as the previous chapter indicates, it was difficult work. The Commissioner's duty was to know enough to make a formal assessment of the taxpayer's liability. He had a number of assessment-raising powers. The ordinary or standard power was that contained in section 166 which authorised assessments based on 'the returns, and from any other information in (the Commissioner's) possession'. Another, 'default assessment' power, contained in section 167 where a person 'makes default in furnishing a return' or 'the Commissioner is not satisfied with the return' was initially used in some scheme cases but came to be resorted to only where a special case existed. The system was that a taxpayer whose scheme had been rejected on assessment had 60 days in which to lodge a formal objection. The Commissioner was obliged to consider the objection. Disallowance gave a taxpayer the right to request that the objection be referred for independent review by a taxation board of review (a lodgment fee of a mere $2 was required) or treated as an appeal and sent on to a state supreme court). Decisions of boards of review on matters of law could go from there to a court.
There were three boards of review, one in each of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. By tradition the chair would be a former senior tax officer, with an accountant and a lawyer as the other members.
Penalties
The potential for penalties was also an important consideration. Taxpayers were expected to make a complete and accurate return of their income. For those minded to do the wrong thing there were penalties designed so that taxpayers did not have the 'odds to nothing', that is, if their transgressions were detected, they faced worse consequences than being called on to pay the tax revealed by official discovery of the transgression. Prosecution action represented an even more severe response, but statutory additional tax (penalty tax) was the principal safeguarding mechanism.
The relevant penalty tax provision was section 226. Under sub-section (2) 'any taxpayer who omits from his return any assessable income, or includes in his return as a deduction for … expenditure incurred by him an amount in excess of the expenditure actually incurred by him'259 was liable to pay as additional tax an amount equal to double the tax attributable to the omission or excess expenditure claim. Sub-section (3) gave the Commissioner power to remit this additional tax, wholly or in part. There were well-known remission practices, a remission to 50 per cent of the tax in question being typical for deliberate delinquencies.
By another part of section 226, sub-section (1), additional tax of 100 per cent of the tax in question was attracted where a taxpayer failed to duly furnish, as required by the Commissioner, information in relation to any matter affecting his or her liability to pay tax.
In February 1979 an important Deputy Commissioners conference was held, such conferences not being a common event. Its purpose was to settle on uniform approaches around Australia in the ATO's administrative reactions to schemes. The flow of legislative responses was by then underway and administrative actions had taken place that were attracting attention and some controversy.
At first blush, such a conference occurring in February 1979 might seem late in the day. As its record shows, it was a meeting whose timing was reflective of system delays. It confirmed directions for the assessment of returns for 1977-78 - lodgment of these returns would have been substantially completed only a few weeks before. That is, the size and range of avoidance schemes implemented in 1977-78 was only in early 1979 available for official review, and even then, not completely. The fact that 'many cases were deliberately fragmented all over Australia' was noted.
This is not to say that assessments rejecting scheme claims had not been raised. They had in many cases. But the objective of issuing assessments in time to allow pre-30 June 1979 tax collection was seen to conflict with the normal practice of ascertaining details of each scheme prior to making assessments. With cases arriving in flood proportions it was no longer practicable to do that in most instances. By then the ATO was getting to know by scheme and sub-scheme type the bare bones of each scheme category. The varying trademark features that individual promoters injected into schemes were becoming known.
However, while this was enough to enable assessments rejecting schemes to be raised it would ordinarily not be enough for those assessments to be defended on objection or before a reviewing or appellate tribunal. For example, a Curran scheme entered into before Budget day 1977 (and thus outside the remedial legislation260) was seen as open to be attacked on the ground that the relevant deduction-creating trade was not carried on in the course of a business of share trading. Close external enquiry was needed to probe this. Another hot issue before the conference concerned section 226 penalties. These had been applied in the past, with the extent of their application varying somewhat between branch offices, and had attracted public criticism.
This criticism had come to Howard's attention, and on 2 February 1979 O'Reilly sent him a strongly-argued account of the situation. He reported that some 200 or so individual taxpayers had already received assessments based on 1977-78 incomes in which penalties had been imposed. Many more such assessments were in the pipeline. Referring to cases, mostly in Melbourne, where enquiries had brought to light at least the broad outlines of the arrangements, O'Reilly said:
Taxpayers whose assessments are in this category are generally those who, through their agents, have sought to manufacture deductions in partnership arrangements involving interest prepayments or mortgage discharge schemes. Both schemes have been brought to an end either by legislation (prepayments of interest) or following your announcement fore-shadowing amendments action (discharge of mortgages). For convenience, I am attaching copies of the announcements you made of the Government's decision to introduce legislation to bring each of these schemes to an end.
Although there is still an enormous amount of work to be done to ascertain all the information relevant to the assessment of the individuals involved, enough has been learnt to show that the avoidance arrangements evidence a quite cynical disregard of the general policy of the income tax law. The taxpayers concerned have claimed very large deductions for amounts purportedly paid by way of interest or in respect of the discharge of mortgages, but most of the schemes seem to have been put through in record time (sometimes within one or two days), usually by tax planners acting under authority given by the individual taxpayers concerned and, often, without the latter either knowing, or having sought to obtain, precise knowledge of the schemes they have participated in. It appears that, in many cases, the arrangements were implemented with unusual haste because most of the participant taxpayers had previously been placed in partnerships which engaged in Curran type transactions that were retroactively set at nought by amending legislation dating from Budget Day 1977.
The artificiality of the present schemes is such that doubts are entertained that they could be upheld by the Australian courts as valid exercises in tax minimisation. Accordingly, on the view that the outgoings claimed were not, in fact, incurred, or not incurred for the stated purposes, assessments have been issued in which the deductions claimed have been disallowed. At the same time, the taxpayers concerned have been notified in the assessments that additional tax equal to 50 per cent of the income tax involved in the disallowed deductions has been imposed.
As to cases of assessments issued 'in which there is even less complete knowledge of the particular tax avoidance arrangements', the minute of 2 February reported:
The cases within this category are mainly ones in which taxpayers have claimed large deductions arising from tax avoidance schemes, the details of which have not so far been uncovered. In such cases, Deputy Commissioners have attempted to obtain information relating to the particular claims but many taxpayers have failed to respond to requisitions or requests for information. Assessments have then been issued in which the deductions claimed have been disallowed and additional tax imposed by way of penalty, in most cases at the rate of 50 per cent of the tax involved.
O'Reilly conceded that it was not clear that in the circumstances section 226 was applicable - at all events he did not think that the law was clear enough to allow him to act on the assumption that the penalty is not imposed by law. Taxpayers had their rights to object and appeal. In keeping with this view the February 1979 conference agreed on procedures for application of section 226 penalties. It was noted that the practice had been instrumental in the withdrawal of some claims arising from schemes, in bringing about settlement of cases and had generally made people more wary of entering into schemes.
Caution was urged by O'Reilly. For example there was seen to be no basis for imposing a penalty where the relevant scheme did not involve any expenditure of funds which formed the basis for a deduction claim. Exploitation of trading stock valuation provisions was one example.
Among the ranks of scheme promoters/implementers there had been one quick reaction to the imposition of sub-section 226(2) penalties. This was to not make a claim in a tax return for a scheme-created deduction, but to claim it in an objection to the consequent assessment in which the deduction claim was not allowed. The deduction was not in the return! This tactic, it was concluded, had to be largely accepted by the ATO except that a penalty could be imposed if the taxpayer disclosed a scheme loss in a return (but did not claim it there) and indicated that it would be claimed on objection.
A test case approach
Some further scene-setting is now appropriate before the account turns to another cat-and-mouse element of the contest.
As mentioned earlier, a taxpayer may object to a tax assessment. The Commissioner was obliged to consider the objection (section 186) but there was no time limit set for this consideration. If an objection was disallowed and the taxpayer had requested that it be referred to a board of review or court and the Commissioner had not done so within 60 days, the taxpayer could, under section 189, give notice requiring the Commissioner to do so within a further 60 days.
It was concluded that the best way to determine whether or not the schemes (implemented before the operative date of remedial legislation) worked was through a test case approach. A decision on a representative case would, it was hoped, lead the way to resolution of other cases with the same or comparable features. The case which the Commissioner might see as a suitable test would not necessarily be the one which taxpayers would select. Each side would tend to want a case offering features best suited to its position.
Recall that by and large, scheme claims had been rejected at the assessment stage without full examination of surrounding facts and circumstances. Disallowance of an objection would require a greater level of enquiry and consideration and defence of the official position before a board or court would entail much more. There were many thousands of cases.
In these circumstances, the ATO sought to achieve tactical advantage this way. It would for each kind of scheme select a very limited number of cases and work them up. The objections lodged in the cases selected for potential test would be disallowed, with all other objections on the same matter being left undetermined. The ball was then in the court of the taxpayers whose objections had been disallowed. Occasionally, such a taxpayer would pull out at this stage, so that another case might have to be found and brought forward. By and large though, these taxpayers paid their $2 and asked that the matter go to a board of review or court. Boards offered a less expensive route and, because it was likely that the party that lost there would want adjudication by a court, another element of delay was offered to a taxpayer by taking the board of review route.
The test case program got underway in early 1979, with formal advice of procedures going out from Canberra in October. Each branch office was asked to submit a short list of potential test cases for each scheme. From these, head office sent back directions as to which cases were to be tested and which branch office or offices were to work the cases up. The work was shared around. Then followed regular reporting and feedback on what was being achieved. Substantial resources were deployed in investigating the details of each scheme, and its implementation, in factual and legal analysis and in marshalling arguments.
Another element of income tax law and practice was in play. This concerned recovery of tax assessed while the Commissioner's rejection of a scheme claim was not determined by him or a tribunal. The law was clear that such a rejection could not be challenged by a taxpayer in proceedings to recover the tax; only through the objection, review and appeal provisions. But it was not to be contemplated that the ATO would sue for recovery before the determination of any objection. If an objection had been disallowed, and the taxpayer had requested reference to a board of review or court, section 201 declared that tax could be recovered on the assessment as if no reference or appeal were pending. However, courts had clearly expressed their distaste for any attempt to recover tax while the liability to pay it was in question, and it was Tax Office policy not to attempt to do so.
Reflecting this, there was also a settled policy relating to the additional tax for late payment of 10 per cent per annum that applied where tax was paid late. If omission to pay on time was due to the existence of a genuine dispute about liability, the ATO would extend time for payment of one-half of the tax in dispute if the taxpayer agreed to pay the other half. This extension was typically for the current phase of a dispute, for example, until the relevant objection was determined. This 50-50 arrangement was terminated, by legislation, in 1982, following a statement by Howard on 10 August.261
Unresolved disputes build up
The long and short of it was that taxpayers who entered into schemes, having been advised by the promoters that the schemes were likely to succeed, but whose claims were rejected by the ATO on assessment, were slow to pay the tax in dispute. The incorrect return penalty under section 226(2) was a deterrent to payment for many. Outstanding disputes rose; so too did levels of unpaid assessed tax.
The Commissioner's annual report for 1979-80 recorded that $700m of tax assessed in avoidance schemes that were under administrative challenge remained uncollected at the end of the year. In reporting on appeals activity the report mentioned some scheme cases that had reached court, Leary262 and Westraders263 being two.
In reporting on what was to be a forerunner of questioning of the test case approach, the report spoke of Woodham v. Commissioner of Taxation, which had been regarded as a test case on two paper schemes and had involved a ruling on the section 226 penalty issue. The Commissioner wrote that it was 'interesting' that the appeal was discontinued by the taxpayer on the day prior to that set down for its hearing in the Supreme Court of Victoria, with the court subsequently confirming the assessment.264
The report for 1980-81 observed:
Difficulties were again encountered during 1980-81 in bringing cases representative of major schemes of avoidance before the appropriate tribunals for decision quickly. Some scheme promoters and participants continue to be unco-operative and evasive in providing information.
As mentioned in the 59th Report one of the great advantages seen by participants in tax avoidance scheme is that, win or lose, they are able to defer payment of all or part of their tax. This means that participants, aided by the promoters, are naturally disposed to use all possible means to delay ultimate resolution of their cases. Consistently with this objective, promoters are increasingly surrounding the schemes they have on offer with secrecy and are strengthening their endeavours to frustrate investigative action.
Nevertheless, cases representative of 15 kinds of avoidance schemes were heard during the year or awaited hearing by the courts or boards of review. Court or board decisions relating to four cases were subject to appeal.
The 1981-82 annual report spoke of the growth in litigation and of board of review time being occupied by complex cases involving artificial avoidance schemes. 'Achieving a delay in the ultimate resolution of the dispute and the collection of tax, whilst preserving anonymity, is thought to be among the reasons for the practice of referring these cases to a Board rather than a Court', the Commissioner wrote. Schemes 'continue to be met with relentless and painstaking opposition' attributable to the 'extraordinary efforts of dedicated investigations and appeals officers'. Some decisions were 'disappointing' but 'statements of principle in some recent judgments suggest that the efficacy of schemes may have been too readily assumed by promoters and participants alike'.
During 1981-82, as the 61st Report recounted, the Commissioner was successful in the Federal Court (the High Court refusing to grant special leave to appeal) in defeating a pre-paid interest scheme265 in the case of Federal Commissioner of Taxation v. Ilbery.266 Of significance was the beginning of consideration in Australia of whether the fiscal nullity principles that had recently emerged in the United Kingdom were applicable here. Other court decisions in scheme cases during 1981-82 were noted in the report. They were to provide evidence of a trend in judicial thinking adverse to the success of schemes. Winds of change were beginning to blow. Chapter 51 is devoted to an account of key cases, with Chapters 52 and 53 dealing with the breathing of some life back into section 260.
Returning to the handling of the large backlog of scheme disputes, by the time of the report for 1982-83 the Commissioner was able to report the continuation of a trend towards a reduction in the incidence of tax avoidance schemes, with very little activity in the promotion or implementation of 'blatant, artificial and contrived' schemes. Cases representative of 34 kinds of schemes were heard during the year or awaited tribunal hearing. Some eight cases in which scheme claims had been dismissed were noted. A table in the report displayed the immensity of the scheme challenge to the tax system, as then evident. At 15 October 1983 there were 48,891 objections lodged by 29,444 taxpayers against disallowance of their claims. Tax sought to be avoided and other amounts in dispute totalled $1,298.5m.
The year-by-year figures in the table267 are instructive as to the growth and decline in scheme implementation. Company-stripping and trust-stripping cases are included.
By 30 June 1984, the level of unresolved disputation in scheme cases had increased further. There were by then 54,886 objections, lodged by 33,551 taxpayers. Tax and other disputed amounts had grown to $1,523m.
Test case approach dropped
The 1983-84 report also noted a move away from concentration on representative cases to a policy of putting pressure on scheme participants generally. In late 1982 the ATO had embarked on a program to determine objections of all participants in schemes covered by representative cases sufficiently advanced in the litigation process. By 30 June 1984 38,805 objections (70.7 per cent of those lodged) had been determined or listed for determination. This did not dispose of the cases. By then, in 57 per cent of the objections disallowed, taxpayers had asked that the matter be referred to a tribunal. The bulge of cases was to move there.
Courts rule against penalties
During 1983-84, the much debated issue of liability for penalty tax for incorrect returns under subsection 226(2) in scheme cases began to come to a head. In that year the Commissioner failed in an appeal to the Federal Court in the case of Rabinov v. Federal Commissioner of Taxation.268 As recorded in the annual report:
The taxpayers had included in their returns claims for deductions (each $25,000) in respect of donations purportedly made to the Ezroh (Relief) Fund. The arrangement, however, lacked any significant element of benefaction: only one per cent of the payments remained with the charity. The deduction claims failed. However, the Federal Court confirmed that, although not a gift, each payment of $25,000 constituted expenditure actually incurred by the taxpayer and that therefore no liability for additional tax under sub-section 226(2).
The High Court refused an application for special leave to appeal.
The Commissioner was to lose again in this general area in the Victorian Supreme Court in the case of Federal Commissioner of Taxation v. Sahhar.269 There, the taxpayer was a member of a share trading partnership which claimed losses from its involvement in a Curran scheme. In his personal return, the taxpayer claimed a deduction for his share of the partnership loss. The claim was disallowed, and subsection 226(2) additional tax imposed. By the time the case got to court the taxpayer had accepted the disallowance; his dispute was only with the penalty. Justice Fullagar held that as the taxpayer's claim for his share of the partnership loss was not a claim in respect of expenditure incurred by him, the additional tax could not be imposed. An appeal by the Commissioner to the Federal Court was dismissed in February 1985.
These decisions shot a hole in the imposition of subsection 226(2) additional tax in scheme cases. Most taxpayers who participated in paper schemes, and who had a current dispute with the ATO did not have to pay the incorrect return penalty tax for deductions claimed through these schemes. The 1984-85 report indicated that over 9,000 taxpayers were involved and most had had their penalty tax remitted by the end of the year. The taxpayers were invited to withdraw from their disputes.
A review of the position led to a decision to give a similar opportunity to participants in other schemes. Some 3,000 participants were invited to withdraw objections and appeals against disallowance of scheme claims on the basis that incorrect return penalty would be fully remitted. At year's end, 1,200 had done so and offers were forthcoming.
The decision in Sahhar's case was to be reversed by legislation. The general strengthening of the penalty provisions by the Taxation Laws Amendment Act 1984 included provisions to expose to penalty tax partners in a partnership which makes a false or misleading statement in a tax return.
Scheme disputes hang around
Despite the removal of subsection 226(2) penalty tax, unresolved scheme cases continued at a high level. The process of widespread disallowance of scheme objections continued apace in 1984-85, following administrative acceptance that the test case approach had not been as successful as expected.270 In the words of the 1984-85 report:
Cases were withdrawn by taxpayers at the last minute so that no precedent was established and another case had to be prepared. To a degree the resources expended in preparing the 'no-go' cases for litigation have been wasted. As a result of the new approach now being adopted more cases are being settled or withdrawn.
Progress was being made:
7 944 references to Boards of Review were settled by negotiation or allowed by the Commissioner, an increase of 3 010 cases for the year. Taxpayers also withdrew more references than the previous year, 5 523 compared with 3 528. 390 appeals to Courts were settled by negotiation or allowed, and a further 609 were withdrawn.
Far more disputes went to the Boards of Review. 767 cases were transmitted in 1983-84, all through Head Office. In 1984-85, 3 317 cases were sent to the Boards, 1 898 through Head Office and the remainder direct from Branch Offices. Over 2 500 cases were sent on in the period March to June 1985.
There were 307 appeals transmitted to Courts including 78 appeals from Boards of Review and the Courts. This compares with 133 appeals in 1983-84 including 42 from Boards of Review and the Courts.
However, the boards of review and courts were about to be deluged. At the end of 1984-85, there were 94,636 board references pending (scheme and non-scheme) with 5,838 such cases headed for the courts. The cases actually at the boards at 1 July 1984 had numbered 1,595 but had grown to 4,912 by year's end, after 3,317 were transmitted during the year.
The 1985-86 annual report noted that again there were no obvious signs of promotion of artificial paper schemes and that the year's aim of determining all back-year scheme objections (company and trust-stripping aside) had been substantially achieved. There were 13,000 were on hand at the beginning of the year, only 500 held by 31 December 1985 and 170 at year's end.
For the same year, 1985-86, some 36,000 scheme cases were referred to courts and boards of review, with the annual report noting that another 14,600 were finalised early, reflecting the pace of settlement activity.
Opportunities which the Tax Office can see for bulk settlement or withdrawal of these cases have been explored. For the remainder, it seems that the bottom line has been reached. The office will press on to defend assessments unless and until the courts tell us that they cannot stand. Rather than await the outcome of a limited number of 'test' cases, the policy which is now being implemented is to give each participant in a scheme the option of prosecuting his case or withdrawing. In practice, as the tribunals call-over or set cases down for hearing, it is becoming clear that most prefer the withdrawal option.
Another perspective on the legacy of the schemes that was being worked through is offered by looking at the matter of tax outstanding. Scheme participants tended not to pay the disputed tax. Schemes-related work had an adverse flow-on effect on other tax collection work. The following graphs are taken from the 1986-87 report.271
Table 9: Income tax outstanding: individuals trusts and companies, year ended 30 June, 1979-87
Table 10: Tax outstanding as a percentage of total of collectable tax; individuals, trusts and companies, year ended 30 June, 1977-87
The Tribunal moves things along
In 1986-87 there were some significant changes affecting taxation disputes. On 1 July 1986, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) took over from the three taxation boards of review their function of reviewing objections disallowed by the Commissioner. From 1 September 1987, the original jurisdiction to hear appeals at court level was transferred from the state supreme courts to the Federal Court. From 1 March 1987 the fee for a review was increased from $2 to $200.
Some idea of the work that the AAT found in front of it can be gleaned from the 1986-87 ATO annual report statistics. The numbers are for scheme and non-scheme cases.272
Table 11: References to the AAT-action taken in the ATO, 1986-87
Table 12: References to the AAT-action taken after transmission to AAT, 1986-87
Before their abolition, the boards of review had not had much time to deal with the flood of scheme-related references that flowed from the ATO once it adopted a 'send-them-all-on' policy. The broad picture was that the boxes containing the referred files simply sat at board offices. They were in the same boxes, unopened, when the AAT assumed the jurisdiction.
One of the features of AAT practice that was soon brought into play was that of a preliminary conference. These conferences proved to be very successful in getting tax scheme disputes settled. One tribunal member is known to have secured finalisation of some 650 cases in one week.
Reporting of the AAT's handling of tax cases began with the Administrative Review Council noting in its report for 1985-86 that some 50,000 such cases were awaiting hearing at the time of transfer on 1 July 1986. (These were all cases, not just scheme-related ones.) A year later, its report noted that numbers had built up partly as a result of the ATO's departure from its test case strategy. During that year, a further 27,000 cases had been referred to the AAT with another 13,600 expected during 1987-88.
The use of callovers,273 a practice that had been used by the boards of review, was proving a successful way of finalising a large number of cases. Use of the AAT's preliminary conference procedure was reported to have been particularly successful. By the end of that year over 8,500 cases had been dealt with, mainly through the preliminary conference and callover system. It was foreseen that the huge backlog could not be disposed of with full efficiency until all cases had been entered into computer records, Australia-wide case management achieved and more tax experts appointed to the AAT. The $200 filing fee, effective from 1 March 1987 was expected to have an effect on access to the AAT.
The AAT report for 1989-90 revised numbers for tax cases. Those inherited from the boards of review were now at 66,000 with the 1987-88 inflow at 9,000 cases. There were 23,720 outstanding cases at the beginning of the year, 18,530 cases were finalised during the year, and 5,219 were outstanding at year's end. A sizeable number of remaining cases were awaiting decisions in test cases or judgments in appeals which were expected to enable resolution without the necessity of AAT hearings.
By the end of 1991-92, outstanding taxation applications (again scheme and non-scheme) were down to 1,735, some 1,400 awaiting the outcome of a case in the courts. The AAT's 1993-94 report recorded that 1,300 of these cases were finalised in 1992-93 as a result of court decisions in a case involving a complex annuity investment scheme - Fletcher v. Federal Commissioner of Taxation.274
Back at the ATO, with the work of the schemes era being brought to a close, reporting in Commissioner's annual reports no longer involved a concentration on scheme disputes, but related to disputes generally. Across the whole range of tax disputes there had been a concentration on operational improvement, the achievements included (without specific reference) the schemes area. One scheme-related case that justifiably earned a mention was a decision of the High Court to overrule its earlier decision in Curran's case.275 That decision was highly important, signalling 'game over' in terms of achieving finalisation of cases.
Another indication of the size, range and speed of the finalisation work was the comment in the Commissioner's 1987-88 report that over the previous four years the Tax Office had referred for tribunal hearing some 95,000 cases (scheme and non-scheme).276 As a result, 17,786 cases awaiting hearing were finalised, with less than six per cent requiring a hearing. Around 46 per cent of cases were finalised by taxpayer withdrawal, 40 per cent through settlement negotiation and nine per cent through the Commissioner allowing the claim.
The 1989-90 report offered the notable statistics that appeals on hand at appellate tribunals which stood at 63,446 on 30 June 1988 were reduced to 32,072 a year later, and to just 8,827 at 30 June 1990.
In summary, in looking back, taxpayers and promoters were found to be somewhat overconfident that schemes would be successful in avoiding tax; they were more successful in achieving a deferment in the time for payment of their tax.
The reaching of settlements with taxpayers was a common way of reaching finality. One branch office settled all but one of some 800 cases allocated to it, a former officer recalling that 'they were heady days'. Tax officers engaged in this work operated under guidelines designed to achieve outcomes justifiable in terms of the available facts and relevant law. Individual officers who had done a lot of work in preparing cases for hearing, only to have them settled, sometimes felt let down that the taxpayer had got off too lightly. In the original devising and implementing of schemes there was a high level of confidence that the courts would not find against them. Cases such as Curran, Slutzkin and Cridland were up in neon. However, there was more to come.
Sections within Chapters 41-50
Last Modified: Wednesday, 16 June 2010