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UNSW
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES




UNSW BUSINESS SCHOOL

SCHOOL OF ACCOUNTING, TAXATION & BUSINESS LAW

TABL 5551/ TABL 5559
TAXATION LAW

TERM 1, 2026

ASSIGNMENT


DUE DATE AND TIME Friday 17 April 2026, at 19:00
LATE LODGMENT As stipulated in the Course Outline
PLACE OF LODGMENT Electronic lodgement via Turn-it-in link on
the Course’s Moodle site
NUMBER OF QUESTIONS Two (2): Answer BOTH Questions
VALUE OF ASSIGNMENT 25%
MAXIMUM WORD LENGTH 2,000 words

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QUESTION 1: (12 marks)
Joan’s father was killed in a car accident on 1 December 2015. As the sole beneficiary of her late
father’s estate, she inherited a 15 square beach house in the Sydney suburb of Coogee. The
property at the time of her father’s death was valued at $2,000,000. After his death she leased
the property to tenants until 1 December 2024 when she sold it for $3,850,000.
Costs associated with the sale included:
• Advertising $ 3,200
• Real estate agent’s commission $28,500
• Legal conveyancing fees $ 2,750
• Stamp duty $30,000

On 21 July 2021, she purchased an old house in Sydney’s Inner Western suburbs for $1,800,000.
It was estimated that the land was worth $1,450,000. In March 2025 she spent $200,000
demolishing this building in preparation for the construction of a new building.

Joan’s grandmother died on 15 November 2023, and being her only grandchild, she left Joan
$180,000 cash, a small parcel of shares, and jewellery in her will. Her grandmother bought the
jewellery in May 1985 at a cost of $40,000, and the market value on 15 November 2023 was
$150,000.
On her way home from work on 15 April 2025, her handbag which contained the jewellery and
other work papers was stolen on the train whilst she was having a nap. Because the jewellery
was not insured, she received an insurance payout of only $120 on 10 June 2025.
Whilst browsing in a second-hand shop, she noticed an attractive silver jug, which she purchased
for $490 in August 2016. A later valuation revealed that the jug was sterling silver and was
made between 1800 and 1820. She sold the jug at an auction on 15 June 2025 for $17,200.
Joan owns a share portfolio of Australian publicly listed stocks. During the year, she sold a
portion of her share portfolio. Details of the shares sold were as follows:
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• 5,000 Igloo Pty Ltd shares (purchased 5 August 2002 for $3.00 each). She sold the entire
parcel of shares on 30 November 2024 for $0.65 each, to prevent further loss. Brokerage
was $1,280 on purchase and $750 on sale;

• 11,000 Acquired Pty Ltd shares (purchased on 10 September1985 for $0.50 each), and
sold on 30 August 2024 for $38 each. Brokerage was $500 on purchase and $30,000 on
sale.

• 500 Elders Co Ltd shares (received from his grandmother’s estate), sold on 6 October
2024 for $78 each. Her grandmother purchased these shares on 2 June 1984 for $0.10
each and they had a market value of $35 each at the time of her grandmother’s death in
November 2023. Brokerage was $3,500 on the sale of the shares.

• 2,000 Johnsons Ltd shares acquired on 15 October 2024 (at $20 per share, plus $200
brokerage). She sold 1,000 Johnsons Ltd shares for $30 per share (brokerage cost $150)
on 20 May 2025.

Required:
• Discuss the income tax implications of the above transactions and calculate Joan’s net capital
gain/loss for the year ended 30 June 2025. Show all relevant calculations and indicate the
likely way in which the capital losses will be applied in calculating the net capital gain, if
any, for the year.

Your answer must be supported by reference to relevant income tax legislation, tax cases
and/or other authorities. The calculations should be included in the assignment and not an
appendix. You are to ignore GST for the purposes of this question.

• Apart from the transactions listed in this question, you can assume that Joan has no other
transactions that will impact on any net capital gain (or net capital loss) calculation.


(12 marks)


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Further information / tips:
• You are not required to calculate Joan’s taxable income for the year as you do not have all
the information to do so. Rather, for each transaction described above, you are to advise
what amount (if any) will be assessable income or an allowable deduction.
• You are to ignore GST for this question.
• Appropriate explanations (with reference to relevant legislation, case law, and other
sources as appropriate) must be provided.

• You can assume that the various taxation laws that are current apply for the year ended 30
June 2025 also applied for earlier years. (That is, when considering transactions that
occurred in earlier years, you can assume there have been no differences from current law).

• You can (and are encouraged to) use headings / sub-headings in your answer.

• You can (and are encouraged to) use tables to display calculations / figures. (As noted in
the instructions, calculations do not form part of your word count).
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QUESTION 2: (13 marks)
David Lim is a solicitor in a one-person practice in Parramatta that specializes in family law
matters. The firm’s office is located in a prestigious office building on Church Street, Parramatta.
He pays an annual rent of $60,000 on his office premises. His practice is registered for the Goods
and Services Tax (GST). You should however ignore GST in your answer to this assignment.
His wife, Angela is employed as Secretary/Receptionist working two days a week. She
commenced on 1 September 2024, and is paid $1,500 per week. A Secretary/Receptionist could
have been engaged from an agency at $100 a day.
During the financial year ended 30 June 2025 David’s practice received $650,000 in fees from
clients for legal services provided by his firm.
In the same period (i.e. – during the financial year ended 30 June 2025), David ceased to hold the
following depreciating assets:
Item Cost Adjustable Termination
Value Value
$ $ $
Office equipment 12,000 9,000 7,850
Computer 3,000 0 310
HP Inkjet Printer 1,100 850 1,200

Rather than work from his office, David sometimes preferred to work from a room in his rented
house. The practice room in his house was originally one of three bedrooms in the house. The
practice room contains a desk with a computer on it, two filing cabinets and two bookshelves.
David uses the practice room exclusively for his legal work, even though his clients do not come
to his house for work-related matters. However, there are times when David works on the dining
room table, particularly when Jenny, his 18 year old daughter who is studying at UNSW is using
the practice room to either listen to Echo-360 University Lecture recordings or to work on her
University assignments. He wishes to claim a deduction for expenses related to the home office
(interest on mortgage, rates, electricity, insurance, and broadband use).
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In mid-October 2024, vandals attacked his office by throwing bricks at the windows and sprayed
graffiti paint on the external walls of his office. Five of the glass windows of his office premises
were smashed. He got the damaged windows replaced at a cost of $850 each, and the cost of
removing the graffiti and repainting the external walls cost $2,000.
In late October 2024, David, Angela, and Jenny decided to go on a six-month European holiday.
David instructed a local real estate agent to rent out their home whilst they were away and to
undertake any necessary repairs, including repainting the whole house at a cost of $3,200. In doing
the work, minor repairs amounting to $350 were carried out and the repainting was done at a cost
of $3,100.
In May 2025, David attended a three day conference organised by the Law Society at the Inter-
Continental Sanctuary Cove Resort in Queensland. Papers presented at the conference were all
extremely relevant to David’s work. The promotional brochure that advertised the conference
stated that there would be 3 days of lectures/seminars on current issues in family and estate
planning law and then there would be free time for the delegates. The cost of registration for the
conference was $1,800 for the three days. The return business class air fare from Sydney to the
Gold Coast was $2,100. Even though an economy return airfare cost $500, and a return premium
economy airfare was $1,000, David decided to fly business class instead. The accommodation at
the Resort where the conference was held was $350 per night. He arrived on the night before the
conference commenced, and stayed there for 3 nights.
At the end of the three day conference, he decided to take a three day holiday in Cairns, where he
spent the time snorkelling and scuba-diving in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as playing golf. The
decision to take the holiday after the conference was made at the same time David decided to
attend the conference. The accommodation in Cairns cost $250 per night. David hired a rental car
for his daily drive from his Cairns hotel to The Great Barrier Reef and back. The car rental cost
him $1,400 for the three days that he was in Cairns. In total, he was away from home for seven
days.
Being very conscious of the need to project a highly professional image, whilst at work, David
wore very expensive Italian tailored suits to work every day. These cost David $6,500 during the
year ended 30 June 2025.
While driving to one of his major clients office on 22 April 2025 he rang the office on his hand-
held mobile phone to request Angela to re-schedule an appointment he had with another client
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later that day. He was photographed by the road-side cameras and fined $330 plus three demerit
points on his driving licence for using his mobile phone whilst driving.

Required:
• David seeks your advice on the income tax implications of the above transactions for the year
ended 30 June 2025. Your advice must be supported by reference to relevant income tax
legislation, tax cases and/or authorities.
(13 marks)


ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
Read all instructions before completing and submitting the assignment.
1. Your assignment must be submitted electronically via the link that will be made available on
Moodle.

2. You should follow the ‘quick presentation and referencing guide’ which immediately follows the
marking criteria at the end of this list of instructions. Failure to do so will be reflected in your
mark for the assignment.

3. The word limit will be strictly enforced.

4. Late Submission Penalties: Late submission will incur a penalty of 5% per day or part thereof
(including weekends) from the due date and time. An assessment will not be accepted after 5 days
(120 hours) of the original deadline unless special consideration has been applied for and
approved. An assignment is considered late if the requested format, such as hard copy or electronic
copy, has not been submitted on time or where the ‘wrong’ assignment has been submitted.

5. In preparing an answer, you will inevitably discuss issues raised by the assignment with other
students. There is nothing in the UNSW rules prohibiting such discussions. However, in the end,
you must be able to state that the work that you have submitted is your own work. Importantly,
you should ensure that you have not committed (either deliberately, or without intent) an act of
plagiarism (e.g. presenting another’s work or ideas as your own, failing to acknowledge the source
of a quotation, submitting the same or similar version of work to that of another student).

6. Given that this assignment is a problem type question that may require you to undertake research,
no staff member working on this course will provide assistance to you in writing and researching
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your answer. If you require clarity in relation to any facts contained in the assignment question,
these should be directed to the lecturer-in-charge.

7. Although the broad topics raised in the assignment will be topics covered in the course, the
assignment will raise issues that will not necessarily have been discussed in lectures or tutorials.
This means that that you may have to go beyond the prescribed materials for the course in relation
to some issues. Whilst you will not be given a separate mark for research, reading beyond the
textbook / required readings may assist you in writing your answer.

8. You are welcome to source information from the ATO (particularly from Taxation Rulings or
similar), but extensive reliance on ATO documents (and the ATO website) instead of legislation
and case law will be reflected in your mark. You should use the ATO publications to support your
understanding of the legislation, (and should reference any ATO materials appropriately), but you
should not use it as a replacement for referring to legislation and cases.
9. If you are dissatisfied with your grade, you should review your assignment and the feedback given.
Discussions regarding grades will not be entered into until you have reviewed your marked
assignment. You should then discuss your grade with the lecturer-in-charge. If you are still
dissatisfied with your grade, you are allowed to request a formal re-mark. Please note that such a
re-mark can result in your grade either (i) staying the same; (ii) being increased; (iii) being reduced.
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MARKING CRITERIA
Markers will be evaluating your assignments based on the following criteria:
Knowledge/Critical thinking and problem solving
For each transaction, have you:
• correctly identified the issue;
• correctly identified appropriate law (legislation and/or cases as appropriate);
• correctly applied the law to the facts;
• clearly argued points that may be in doubt;
• reached a conclusion as to the taxation treatment.
Written communication/presentation:
• Does your assignment have a clear structure?
• Is it free of errors (such as spelling, grammatical or typographical errors)?
• Does your assignment follow the “presentation and quick reference guide” included in
this document?
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PRESENTATION AND QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE

Presentation
1. You must use one and a half (1.5) spacing and a font size of 12. You must leave at least
a 2.54 cm margin from both sides of the A4 page (note that this is the ‘normal’ margin setting
in Microsoft Word).
2. Your assignment is required to be referenced. You should use footnotes and your
assignment should also include a reference list. Taxation law courses generally follow the
Australian Guide to Legal Citation (“AGLC”). Some examples of this referencing style are
provided below.
3. Footnotes are not generally counted in the word count. However, you must not place
substantial parts or central parts of your answer or argument in footnotes.
4. Calculations are not included in the word count. We encourage you to use tables to present
calculations. These can be included in the body of your assignment.
5. Quotations are included in your word count. The reason for this is that we do not want you
quoting large portions of the legislation in your assignment. The markers know what the
legislation says. (Similarly, although you will at times need to refer back to specific facts
given in the question, we do not want you to restate all the facts in your assignment. This is
a waste of words).
6. You are encouraged to use headings in your assignment.
7. You should carefully proof-read your answer (a number of times) before submission.

Referencing
1. Your assignment must be fully and properly referenced. Failure to reference your
sources is plagiarism and amounts to academic misconduct.
2. In your assignment, you will need to refer to, at a minimum, legislation and cases.
You may also want to refer to a range of other material including government
documents, books and websites. Provided in the below tables are some examples of
how to cite these sources. Note that these are examples only – some of these will not
be relevant for your assignment, and you will be expected to refer to sources that are
not included in the table.
3. Table 1 (“Reference examples”) contains examples of how you should reference
sources in your reference list. Table 2 (“Pinpoint reference examples”) contains
examples of pinpoint referencing. This is when you refer to a specific page,
paragraph or section. Your assignment should utilise pinpoint references as much as
possible. Table 3 (“Subsequent reference examples”) contains examples of how you
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are allowed to reference the sources provided in Table 2 if you have already given
the full reference in an earlier footnote.
4. Please note that for this assignment, we are allowing certain abbreviations and
modifications that do not strictly follow the AGLC style guide. This is to simplify the
referencing process for you. If you are studying further Taxation Law courses, you
should follow the AGLC (or the referencing guide given in that course).

Table 1: Reference examples
Legislation Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth).
Cases Sun Newspapers Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1938) 61 CLR
337.
AusNet Transmission Group Pty Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation
[2015] HCA 25.
Taxation rulings Australian Taxation Office, Income Tax: Carrying on a Business as a
Professional Artist, TR 2005/1.
Books Frank Gilders et al, Understanding Taxation Law 2017 (LexisNexis, 2017).

(Note: “et al” is used following the first author as there are more than three
authors. Where there are two or three authors, the names of authors should be
included).
Journal articles Diane Kraal, ‘University teaching: A reflection of tax teaching and cultural
diversity’ (2014) 9 Journal of the Australasian Tax Teachers Association
215.
Websites Australian Taxation Office, Income you must declare (20 May 2016)
Australian Taxation Office and-deductions/Income-you-must-declare/>

(Note: the first reference to “Australian Taxation Office” is as the author of
the webpage. The second reference to “Australian Taxation Office” is the
title of the general website on which the document is located. The date is the
last date the webpage was updated. Where there is not a full date available,
as much of the date that is available should be included).
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Table 2: Pinpoint reference examples
Legislation Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth), s 8-1(2)(a).
Cases Sun Newspapers Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1938) 61 CLR 337,
363.
AusNet Transmission Group Pty Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation
[2015] HCA 25, [72].
Taxation rulings Australian Taxation Office, Income Tax: Carrying on a Business as a
Professional Artist, TR 2005/1, para 34.
Books Frank Gilders et al, Understanding Taxation Law 2016 (LexisNexis, 2016)
412.
Journal articles Diane Kraal, ‘University teaching: A reflection of tax teaching and cultural
diversity’ (2014) 9 Journal of the Australasian Tax Teachers Association
215, 218.
Websites Australian Taxation Office, Income you must declare (20 May 2016)
Australian Taxation Office and-deductions/Income-you-must-declare/>

(Note: there is generally no requirement to use a pinpoint reference for a
webpage. If pinpoints (such as paragraph numbers) are available, these should
be included).

Table 3: Subsequent reference examples
Legislation ITAA97, s 8-1(2)(a).
Cases Sun Newspapers Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1938) 61 CLR
337, 363.
AusNet Transmission Group Pty Ltd v Federal Commissioner of Taxation
[2015] HCA 25, [72].
Taxation rulings TR 2005/1, para 34.
Books Frank Gilders et al, above n X, 412.
“X” is the footnote number where you have first referred to this source. For
example, if you had first referred to this source at footnote 10, the reference
would be: Gilders et al, above n 10, 412.
Journal articles Kraal, above n X, 218.
Websites ATO, Income you must declare, above n “X”.



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