Okay, say person "A" gets his own tax ruling... can I use it to apply to me if I quote it... or do I need to get my own?? Thanks! Shiny.
You can look at the other persons ruling and see how your situation stacks up....however if you want certainty you will need to go through the wringer and obtain your own ruling. My opinion (not advice) don't do it as you may find you are then on the tax man's target list. A friend recently went through this process he found a legal way around buying a home he could live in using his super money. It was legal but the tax man took exception and he spent two years fending off the tax office audit hounds. He never went ahead with his idea but that did not stop the tax office making his life absolute hell. Kind Regards non recourse
There is a reason they are called Individual Rulings. I had one ruling for a person regarding foreign currency gains/losses, where the Income Tax Act (1997) wasn't clear. It came back allowing for certain deductions with specific caveats. Tried to apply for another ruling for another person, came back with a negative 'denied' response. Essentially the system allows the ATO to make up double standards. "What'cha gonna do 'bout it?"
I agree with the comments and would like to add .. You often see ATO private rulings which are done in a hurry and simply wrong. When the error is in the taxpayer's favour, of course the taxpayer does not seek a review of the ruling, since they are in a better position than they should be. When the error is in the ATO's favour, then the taxpayer seeks a review. Then on review the erroneous ruling will be corrected. Another point is that the published rulings are edited to anonymise them and important base information may be removed in this process. Hence published private rulings can be misleading. It is dangerous to rely on somebody else's private ruling. When applying for a private ruling, you can refer to someone else's private ruling in an attempt to persuade the ATO of the correctness of your contentions. However it is much better to rely on the terms of the tax statute, ATO Interpretive decisions, tax cases and other tax determinations all of which are freely available from the "legal database" area of the ATO website.
I find this very interesting. The super rules are extremely tight around members deriving benefits from super investments, i.e. living in a house owned by the fund. Do you have more information about how he was going to do this?
