The purpose of this guidance is to outline our position on how the income tax and goods and services tax (GST) laws apply to social infrastructure Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in respect of a ‘standard form’ securitised licence structure and a few variations on the ‘standard form’ structure.
It is not meant to provide the answers to all your questions or explain the tax treatment of every type of transaction you might enter. Our aim is to outline the key tax outcomes for the standard form PPP model and share our areas of concern, to help you make informed decisions about your tax affairs.
This guidance does not bind us to a particular view of the law. Only taxation rulings, taxation determinations or private rulings can do that. However, if you have transactions that are materially the same as the transactions outlined in this guidance, our officers would be expected to follow the views set out in this guidance.
The guidance may be updated as new transactions emerge, or changes are made to tax laws that may impact the analysis.
This guidance does not apply where the purported ‘standard form’ structure includes:
- the securitised licence fees relate to a pre-existing asset and/or to pre-existing cash flows
- the project entity (depicted as Project Trust in the standard form PPP) is a partnership, or
- where one or more members of the consortium effectively finance, other than insubstantial or nominal amounts, the 'design and construction' (D&C) or 'operations and maintenance' (O&M) phases of the project (such finance we refer to as 'investor debt').
Investor debt should be contrasted with third-party debt. We refer to the terms 'members of the consortium' and 'investors' interchangeably and these words should be contrasted with 'third-party investors'.
For guidance on non ‘standard form’ PPP structures, contact us or apply for a private ruling:
- Guidance and general enquiries – PGPrivateEquity@ato.gov.au
- Private rulings – PGIAdvice@ato.gov.au