Newsletter
April 2017 Newsletter
Overseas income not exempt from Australian income tax
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has agreed with the ATO’s decision that income a tapayer earned when working for the United States Army was not exempt from Australian income tax. The taxpayer, who was a mechanic and electrician, played a critical role in plant construction in Afghanistan.
While the project the taxpayer worked on met the legal definition of an “eligible project”, the AAT decided that the exemption he had claimed under s 23AF of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 did not apply because the project was not one that the Trade Minister had approved in writing, and there was no evidence that the Trade Minister considered it “in the national interest”.