Andrew Leigh

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER OWN GOAL FROM THE TURNBULL GOVERNMENT

Reports today identify a “strange anomaly” in tax law stemming from the Turnbull Government’s $65 billion big business handout that may cause “fairly serious errors” because of how the changes interact with GST law.

The Tax Institute’s Bob Deutsch has identified a potential oversight stemming from the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enterprise Tax Plan) Act 2017, which has already passed parliament.

If true, this would not be the first time the government had botched its company tax changes. Last year, the Turnbull Government was forced to go back to parliament with amendments to ensure that passive investment companies would not get the benefit of the tax cut for small and medium sized firms. That exercise ended in farce when the government had to amend its own amendments.

Now tax agents and small and medium businesses are worried that the government has made yet another legislative drafting error.

The number of mistakes in the government’s tax laws could soon surpass the number of Liberal frontbenchers who fancy themselves to take over as Prime Minister. And that’s saying something.

Authorised by Noah Carroll, ALP, Canberra