Big four pleased with key state law amendment

Speaking at the Tax Institute forum last week, PwC partner Rachael Cullen discussed several recent legislative changes, including the Tasmanian Duties Amendment (Landholder and Corporate Reconstruction and Consolidation) Act 2016.

The amendment introduced a corporate reconstruction/consolidation duty scheme for the state. It provides a duty exemption for corporate group re-organisations within a corporate group. Previously, Tasmania offered only ex gratia relief in particular cases.

It also replaced the ‘land rich’ regime with a landholder regime, which will extend duty to certain acquisitions of listed companies and public unit trusts.

“In December last year, Tasmania decided to catch up with everybody else and has also moved from the land rich to a land holding regime,” Ms Cullen said.

“At the same time, they brought in the extended landholder duty to listed acquisitions of the interest in listed countries, like a number of the other states have.”

Ms Cullen Tasmania also “happily” brought in some corporate reconstruction provisions.

“They now have provisions that look and feel a lot like the provisions in other states.

“It just means for a lot of us we don’t have to say ‘except for Tasmania’ anymore when we’re talking about these rules.”