ATO

Assessing claims of privilege involving multidisciplinary firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers that offer legal and accounting services is "inherently awkward", a court heard on the final day of a hearing in a privilege battle between the accounting firm and the ATO.

A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a "cloak of legal privilege" earned hundreds of dollars less per hour than his non-lawyer assistants, a court has heard.

Meat processing company and former PricewaterhouseCoopers client JBS has slammed as a “nightmare to the rule of law” a claim by the Commissioner of Taxation that the accounting giant’s internal protocols destroyed the company’s lawyer-client relationship.

Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers used one of its legally qualified partners as a "postbox" to provide a "cloak of privilege" to work conducted for meat processing company JBS, the Commissioner of Taxation has told the Federal Court.

Tabcorp and Tatts Group have brought eight proceedings against the Australian Tax Office over more than a billion dollars in deductions for fees to gambling authorities in four states.

Auctus Resources will not be able to hang on to a $2.3 million R&D tax offset refund which the Full Court found was paid by mistake, after the High Court turned down its special leave application.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has objected to swathes of evidence from the Commissioner of Taxation being included in an upcoming trial over privilege, claiming the material oversteps a process put in place by the court to only examine a small sample of documents.

South Australian mining magnate Bob Johnson faced court Friday charged over a scheme to defraud the federal government of $38.5 million in taxes.

Tabcorp and its Tatts unit have filed three proceedings against the ATO this year, with the gambling giants asking the court to allow a total of $538 million in deductions for gambling licences in three states over three financial years.

The ATO is challenging a judge's decision to allow oil giant Shell Australia $2.2 billion in deductions for the cost of certain exploration activities conducted under an acquisition that increased its stake in Woodside Energy's Browse Basin gas exploration joint venture project.