The second tranche of the Federal Budget legislation has been released with feedback requested by 21 August, providing interested parties with barely two weeks to consider and evaluate the proposed changes.
Unfortunately for taxpayers, this second tranche is not the trust taxation changes that have been proposed and on which a significant amount of clarity is still required, but rather it’s the first round of changes to the recently enacted law. Yes, you read that correctly, the second tranche (which consists of four different pieces of legislation) makes further amendments to the law and / or repeals and corrects the changes recently enacted.
The government continue to churn out legislation rather than fully consider the impact of the changes and work through the more complex situations before they deliver a consolidated and considered piece of law. The explanatory memorandums (“EM”) accompanying the proposed law make further promises of more changes to come to deal with “complex situations”. Even the EMs look rushed with spelling mistakes and an example of the apportionment method indicating that indexation increases a capital loss.
The continuing nature of the changes and amendments reinforces the feeling that the tax changes were not fully thought through and the legislation giving effect to the changes (both rounds 1 and 2) were / are rushed. The approach to the changes appears to be something of a patchwork quilt of legislation seeking to fix errors and oversights in the original legislation.
