Limit on refunds and allocations of tax
2006 amendment to the imputation rules extends the circumstances when tax overpaid before a breach in shareholder continuity can be refunded.
Sections MD 2(4) of the Income Tax Act 1994 and the Income Tax Act 2004
The imputation rules have been amended to extend the circumstances when tax overpaid before a breach in shareholder continuity can be refunded. The amendment corrects an anomaly in the previous rules.
Background
Generally, overpaid company tax cannot be refunded if a refund would result in a debit balance to the company's imputation credit account (ICA).
Under section ME 5(1)(i), a breach of shareholder continuity in a company results in a debit arising to the ICA at the time of the breach. Although a "discontinuity" debit can effectively be ignored for the purposes of effecting the refund, there is a condition that the debit must arise after "the date of payment of the first instalment of provisional tax" for the year to which the overpayment applied.
Where a company does not pay provisional tax - for example, because its income tax liability is satisfied instead by resident withholding tax deducted from interest - there is no "date of payment of the first instalment of provisional tax". Therefore no adjustment can be made to the ICA balance under current law in relation to the overpayment that arose before a breach in continuity.
The anomaly has only recently been identified, although it has existed since the imputation rules were introduced. Inland Revenue is aware of only one case affected by it.
Key features
Section MD 2(4) of the 1994 and 2004 Income Tax Acts, which effectively allows an imputation account debit that arises on a breach of shareholder continuity to be ignored for the purpose of calculating a tax refund, has been amended to ensure that it operates correctly, whether the overpayment of tax was made before or after the first instalment of provisional tax.
Application date
The amendment applies from the 2000-2001 year. This date is arbitrary. It was chosen because it will ensure that the correct tax treatment is applied to the only case identified so far as affected by the anomaly.
Other sections in this legislation
| Offshore investment | Tax rules for PIEs | Tax on geothermal wells | Australian superannuation fund exemption | New rules for selecting SSCWT rates | Allowing documents to be removed for inspection | Military and police allowances | New rules for spreading income on the sale of patents | Organisations approved for charitable donee status | Consolidated groups and foreign losses | Assessments by the Commissioner | GST and financial services | GST on fringe benefits | GST grouping rules | Taxation of business environmental expenditure | Family assistance provisions | Rewrite amendments | Tax depreciation treatment of patents | Fringe benefit tax | Depreciation formula | Economic rate of depreciation | Calculating depreciation rates | Election to depreciate | Transitional residents | Death and asset transfers | New GST due date | Limit on refunds and allocations of tax | The imputation system and companies | Reverse takeovers | Changes in GST taxable periods | Miscellaneous technical amendments |