The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) recently released its decision impact statement in relation to the transfer pricing decision in Commissioner of Taxation v Glencore Investments Pty Ltd, affirming that the decision outcome was ‘mostly unfavourable to the Commissioner’. The decision impact statement follows the High Court’s refusal in May 2021 for the Commissioner to apply for special leave to appeal the decision of the Full Federal Court of Australia.
The ATO’s decision impact statement sets out the Commissioner’s views regarding a number of important transfer pricing issues, including the appropriate degree of depersonalisation, evidence, reconstruction and contrasts between Subdivision 815-A of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997) (which was relevant for the Glencore case) and Subdivision 815-B of the ITAA 1997 (which is more commonly encountered in practice today and, while similar to Subdivision 815-A, contains some textual differences).
