Trying to Make Sense of the Financial Arrangements Regime

Abstract:     
The proposed Australian regime for taxing financial arrangements ("TOFA") is presented as a unified coherent regime, based upon, and executed by reference to certain principles. These principles leave much important detail to be inferred, with sometimes unpredictable consequences. Moreover, the drafters have chosen to construct TOFA as a parallel regime alongside existing rules, rather than as a substitute for them, where it is triggered. This deliberate duplication then requires adjustment rules to manage the overlap between existing law and TOFA. These design choices - to insert a duplicate regime and then manage the overlap by a subtraction process - is used elsewhere in tax legislation and creates well known difficulties. The decision to repeat this system for TOFA re-creates many of the same kinds of difficulties, for no obvious benefit.

Keywords: income tax, financial transactions

JEL Classifications: H25, H26, K34

Accepted Paper Series