Handbook

This course is designed to be one of the earlier courses in the M Tax program and it is a compulsory course. The focus is on the three major business/investment vehicles: partnership, trust and company. The course commences with an overview of the non-tax and tax factors to consider in the all-important “choice of entity” question. The course then moves to partnerships, both general law and tax law partnerships, and examines the tax rules around the life cycle of a partnership, namely, creation, operation and dissolution. The course then moves to closely held trusts and deals with a range of central tax rules concerning these trusts. From here, the course deals with the taxation of children’s income. The course then moves to closely held companies where coverage of the tax rules is at both the company level and the shareholder level. The final topics deal with the general small business rollover and the small business CGT concessions.

For closely held trusts and companies, the tax rules not covered here are flagged for coverage in TABL 5505 Advanced Taxation of Trusts (elective) and TABL 5503 Advanced Taxation of Corporations (elective) respectively.

A central theme throughout the course is to gain an appreciation and recognition of the general law effect (non-tax law effect) of entity classification and transactions concerning the entity when that general law effect is relevant to the tax outcome. The analysis of the rules in this course is designed to help you develop a sophisticated understanding of the tax law when applied to the relevant entity and the transactions or situations involved.

Assessment for the course will comprise contribution to solving a technical tax problem during the term, submission of a written assignment answer to a technical tax problem and a final open book exam dealing with technical tax problems.