Jane Rolfe, Aaron Yeo and Anirudh Theertham discuss new requirements in the ATO's final draft of Australian Local File for 2018 tax years.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has recently released its final draft of the 2018 Message Structure Table (MST) and associated XML Schema for the Australian Local File (ALF) for 2018 tax years.
This will represent the second ALF that most taxpayers will be required to lodge and there are a number of new requirements and key changes from the first ALF such that a simple roll-forward is not an option. In particular, key changes to the ALF requirements include:
Taxpayers continue to be able to utilise the administrative solution, which allows Part A of the ALF to be submitted with the tax return in lieu of Questions 2-17 of the International Dealings Schedule. We expect more taxpayers to utilise the solution in their second year, and this may be more attractive given the ATO has extended the due date for Part A of the ALF to 14 September 2018 for 31 December/31 January year-end balancers.
The effort required to complete the ALF in year 2 has increased and even the reduced FX disclosures require additional analysis to determine eligibility. Taxpayers should therefore allow themselves ample time to collate the additional information required for the ALF, particularly if they are seeking to rely on the administrative solution.