OZschwitz: Packer fights Tax Office over revised assessment

JAMES PACKER'S Consolidated Media is battling the Tax Office over a bill dating back seven years.

Last October the company, which owns stakes in the pay TV businesses Foxtel and Fox Sports and the jobs website Seek, was slapped with a revised tax assessment for the year ended June 30, 2002.

The size of the bill is not known. Consolidated Media is hoping to convince the Federal Court that the tax bill was too high.

Consolidated Media was created from the split of Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd into separate media and gaming companies in 2007. The tax bill dates back to when the company was trading as PBL.

It argues that the proceeds of an off-market buyback of PBL shares it held in 2001-02 were not a capital gain under the Income Tax Assessment Act and should therefore not be included in its assessable income. PBL treated the buyback as a dividend entitled to a tax rebate and the Tax Commissioner has disallowed this.

In 2001-02 PBL made a pretax profit of $315 million. It paid tax at a rate of about 18 per cent.

Details of the dispute were contained in documents filed with the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday. The case has been listed for a scheduling conference on August 18.

LNK

OZschwitz: Packer fights Tax Office over revised assessment

OZschwitz: Packer fights Tax Office over revised assessment

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