Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to enable you to explore and communicate your understanding of relevant aspects of taxation law.
In the future some of you will work as accountants. In the course of doing so, you may have clients who ask for tax advice. They may ask you how transactions they have entered into might be regarded for tax purposes (for example, is a transaction likely to be regarded as income or capital?). You may therefore be faced with clients in real-life situations and be asked to give advice to them about how they should treat these situations for the purpose of their tax returns.
During this course, we will discuss what the law is (through reference to some of the main tax legislation, case law and ATO rulings) and will also discuss from time to time how we would tackle giving advice. For example, with some of the tutorial questions, we will discuss how to study law courses and write answers to tax law exams. In the course of doing so, we will talk about how we must identify the relevant facts in a situation, identify the relevant rules, apply the rules to the facts and reach a conclusion. This will lead us to the exam, where you will continue to gain practical experience in answering problem style questions. This assignment will enable you to develop skills in answering such problem style questions before you sit the examination for this course.