Tax Commissioner tries to run BOTH of two alternative proceedings

Do as I Say, Not as I Do - From the Commissioner of Taxation's Litigation 'Rule Book'

In these proceedings, two available options are available: 

1. The time-consuming, expensive option. Apply for leave to appeal from a decision made in favour of the Tax Commissioner, and, if successful, proceed to a hearing of an appeal at some time in the future before the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia.
2. The faster, less-expensive option. Apply to have the decision in favour of the Tax Commissioner set aside on the ground it was obtained by fraud. 

The second option is one the Tax Commissioner has used in a proceeding where he was the applicant. As an example of hypocrisy, his Counsel made unjustifiable aspersions against the applicant - for daring to use exactly the same option as the Tax Commissioner has done in other proceedings. The only difference here is that the Tax Commissioner is the respondent and not the applicant. 

 

The Tax Commissioner's legal team's response to a request that the first option be deferred while the second option was allowed to proceed resulted in an unexpected insistence that BOTH of the two alternative options be conducted at the same time.

This is an absurd waste for the Court's time and resources, and even the respondents' time and resources. This is a straightforward situation of the legal representatives feathering their own nests at the expense of everyone else.

To prevent this ridiculous situation playing out, the applicant wrote to the Tax Commissioner's legal team on 7 August 2024 informing them he was going to discontinue the application for leave to appeal.

Faced with this unexpected thwarting of the intention to run BOTH of two options at the same time, the Tax Commissioner's legal representative said .... NOTHING.

As Rumpole of the Bailey often lamented, "No answer, came the stern reply".

The correspondence with the Federal Court of Australia - enclosing the unanswered requests to the Tax Commissioner's legal representative is here. Ashurst Australia has become strangely silent when faced with this unanticipated development:

A copy of the above letter and enclosures is available on Google Drive:

Letter about Notice of discontinuance of Application for Leave to Appeal - lodged 12/08/2024.

---

At the last minute, the Commissioner of Taxation's legal team answered the applicant's offer to discontinue one of the two alternative options by ... REJECTING the offer.

The Tax Commissioner's legal representative Ashurst Australia's late correspondence with the Federal Court of Australia is here:

A copy of the above email is available on Google Drive:

Ashurst Australia's email about the applicant's offer to discontinue the Application for Leave to Appeal - received 15/08/2024.

---