Tag: deductions

Treasurer rules out standard tax deduction

At a press conference on Tuesday , June 19, the Treasurer indicated that the proposal to provide individuals with an optional standard deduction of $500 for work-related expenses and the cost of managing tax affairs would not be revisited.

This year’s Federal Budget in May announced that it would not go ahead. Mr Swan said the Government decided to raise the tax-free threshold and while it was “not a complete substitute” for the standard deduction, it was “a fundamental economic reform and tax reform in place that goes to workforce participation in particular”. When asked if this would be reviewed, he said “I can’t at this stage see it being revisited. I’ve never raised any expectation that it would be and I can’t see that it will be at this stage.”

Standard tax deduction – draft legislation

The Australian Government has released for comment exposure draft
legislation and explanatory material regarding the Federal Budget
2010–11 proposal to provide individual taxpayers with a standard tax deduction.
The draft legislation proposes a standard deduction of $500 for
2012–13, rising to $1000 from 2013–14. The deduction would replace
work-related expenses and the cost of managing tax affairs for those
taxpayers whose claims for these expenses are less than the standard
deduction. Taxpayers whose claims for these expenses exceed the standard
deduction would still be able to claim those deductions.

Student’s tax claim upheld by High Court

Hundreds of thousands of youth allowance recipients will be able to claim their education costs as tax deductions as a result of a landmark High Court judgment delivered in Canberra today.

The Commissioner of Taxation had appealed to the High Court to overturn a Federal Court ruling, which allowed former Australian Catholic University student Symone Anstis to claim deductions for her study costs because they were incurred in gaining her youth-allowance income.

But the High Court today dismissed the appeal and ordered the commissioner to pay Ms Anstis’s costs.

Full story here . For earlier articles on this case,click the education tag