Finding legal database
The Australian taxation office is a non-corporate commonwealth entity of the treasury portfolio. The organization serves four Ministers they are:
- Treasurer;
- Revenue and Financial Services Minister;
- Small Business Minister; and
- Assistant minister of treasurer
The responsibility of Australian Taxation Office is to ensure that the community has faith and confidence in the system of Australian Taxation and superannuation. In order to promote more understanding and knowledge of tax Australian taxation office has provided a legal database (Braithwaite 2017). The legal database is particularly important for researching various taxation rulings and determinations. The legal database also provides details of tax cases that are difficult to find elsewhere. The legal database is a useful resource that provides valuable references. The legal database provides useful policy and legal information that the user can use for making important decisions (Katic and Leigh 2015). The legal database of the Australian Taxation Office is user-friendly but initially it requires some explanation and guide so that the database can be used effectively. In this report, an attempt is made to provide a guide for using Australian Taxation Office legal database.
The users can access the legal database from the website of Australian taxation office. The link for legal database is provided in every page of the website. The link of legal database is given below:
In the legal database, the contents that are included are the laws that are administered by the Commissioner of taxation (Booth and Whelan 2014). The contents of the legal database includes:
- The primary legal regulations and acts;
- The amendments of the regulations and acts;
- The materials like memoranda and second reading speeches;
- The determination issued by the Commissioner are also included in the database; and
- The most important part of the contents are the public rulings;
Public Rulings
The opinion of the Commissioner regarding the application of tax law are included in the public ruling and determinations. The guidelines for the application of various provisions of the law are provided in the public ruling. This also provides guidelines on the application of recently enacted laws on taxpayers of different classes (Lee et al. 2016).
Practical compliance guidelines
The legal database includes practical compliance guidelines. This document outlines the allocation of resources depending on the assessment risk. This document outlines approaches that can practically mitigate problems relating to application of tax laws (Wilkins 2015).
ATO interpretative decisions
The legal database includes the edited version of the decision of the Commissioner and it is known ATO integrative decision. This document indicates the manner in which the Commissioner can apply the law. It is useful in applying the law accurately and consistently under different situations.
The legal database includes judgments of the cases related to tax matters in the Australian courts. In addition to the cases from Australian Court, various judgments from New Zealand, Canada and United kingdoms are included in the database (Cao et al. 2015).
Contents of Legal database
Decision impact statements
The response of the Australian taxation office in the significant cases decided by the court or tribunal is included in the decision impact statement
In the legal database, there are three ways for finding the documents. The three ways for finding the documents are search, browse and quick access.
Search
In the legal database there are two type of search functions available one is quick search and another is advanced search. The quick search option is the primary feature of the homepage of legal database. The quick search option allows the user to search using free text so that the desired information can be obtained from the database (Duffield et al. 2015). There are options that are available while using the quick search feature. These options are archived search, exact phrase search and selection of categories. In the exact phrase search, the particular word or phrase is searched from the available legal database documents. The archived contents can also be also searched using the option archive contents. The search can be restricted to any particular area by selecting from various available options like ATO rulings, ATO determination, decision impact statement, cases and other documents of the ATO. The advanced search option is available at the bottom of the quick search option. The documents that have the word or phrase being searched is shown as the result (Marques et al. 2015). The legal database also provides add function that allows the user to do multiple searches at the same time. The legal database provides an option to narrow the search result by providing the date of judgment. The search can be further expanded by including the archive contents.
Browse
The users of the legal database can select the browse option that is provided in the left side of the home page. It is particularly useful if the user is unaware of exact title or content of the document that is being searched. The user using Browse All option can browse the entire legal database. On the other hand, the user can focus on browsing of specific documents like public rulings, compliance guidelines, decision impact statement, legislation and cases. The legal database also provides the option of browsing by topics to the users.
Quick access
The quick access option allows the user to directly access some commonly used documents that includes public ruling, ATO guidelines, legislations and others. If the quick access option is used for viewing legislations then the user should select the relevant acts or regulations.
Finding the documents
The user will get search results after searching the legal database. In the search, result page the searched item is shown at the top of the page. The search result page also shows the total result of the search and the number of result that are shown per page. There is an option that the user can use for changing the number of results that will be displayed per page. In the left side of the search result page, there are several options provided to refine the result. There are numbers beside each of the options that indicates the number of result under that option (Wilkins 2014).
There are two options there are provided for every search results document category and references. The document category is helpful in limiting the search results to the particular categories of documents. In this, the user can select multiple options for refining the search. In that case, the search results will only show the category that have been selected. The result can be for the refined by providing subcategories. The search can be narrowed further by using the option document references. In this case, only the specific document is searched for the desired result.
The user should select the document the distributor would from the list of result searched. The information of the documents and the aid for navigation of the document is available at the time of viewing the document. If the option is provided then the PDF document can be downloaded. It should be noted that this option is not available for all the documents. There is an option in the website that the link of a legal database page that is being viewed can be emailed. The website also provide the option of printing the legal advice documents (Richardson et al. 2013).
Conclusion
The discussion above has highlighted the options that can be used for accessing all the necessary documents for taking correct taxation decisions. The legal database also provides subscription services so that the user can easily get update of the newer revised information’s. There are two types of subscription available that is email subscription and really simple syndication (RSS) newsfeed. The subscriptions are available for providing updates relating to ATO interpretations, decision impact statement, public ruling etc. Based on the above discussion it can be concluded that the legal database of the Australian taxation office has significantly helped user. It has helped in simplifying the tax administration process by providing readily available information.
Reference
Booth, S. and Whelan, J., 2014. Hungry for change: the food banking industry in Australia. British Food Journal, 116(9), pp.1392-1404.
Braithwaite, V. ed., 2017. Taxing democracy: Understanding tax avoidance and evasion. Routledge.
Cao, L., Hosking, A., Kouparitsas, M., Mullaly, D., Rimmer, X., Shi, Q., Stark, W. and Wende, S., 2015. Understanding the economy-wide efficiency and incidence of major Australian taxes. Treasury WP, 1.
Duffield, C., Graham, E., Donoghue, J., Griffiths, R., Bichel?Findlay, J. and Dimitrelis, S., 2015. Why older nurses leave the workforce and the implications of them staying. Journal of clinical nursing, 24(5-6), pp.824-831.
Katic, P. and Leigh, A., 2015. Top wealth shares in Australia 1915–2012. Review of Income and Wealth.
Lee, A.J., Kane, S., Ramsey, R., Good, E. and Dick, M., 2016. Testing the price and affordability of healthy and current (unhealthy) diets and the potential impacts of policy change in Australia. BMC public health, 16(1), p.315.
Marques, J.S., Yigitcanlar, T. and da Costa, E.M., 2015. Australian innovation ecosystem: A critical review of the national innovation support mechanisms. Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 9(2), pp.3-28.
Richardson, G., Taylor, G. and Lanis, R., 2013. Determinants of transfer pricing aggressiveness: Empirical evidence from Australian firms. Journal of Contemporary Accounting & Economics, 9(2), pp.136-150.
Wilkins, R., 2014. Evaluating the Evidence on Income Inequality in Australia in the 2000s. Economic Record, 90(288), pp.63-89.
Wilkins, R., 2015. Measuring income inequality in Australia. Australian Economic Review, 48(1), pp.93-102.
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