Justice Craig Colvin

The ATO has won the nod from the High Court to appeal a finding that a royalty withholding tax did not apply to payments from Schweppes to PepsiCo under agreements to sell brands like Pepsi and Gatorade in Australia.

Former Melbourne Demons chairman Glen Bartlett has been given the green light to relaunch a defamation case against the AFL club’s president and other senior officials after discontinuing proceedings that were transferred from his home state of Western Australia to Victoria.

In a loss for the Australian Taxation Office, the Full Federal Court has found that payments made by Asahi Breweries-owned Schweppes to PepsiCo under agreements to sell brands such as Pepsi and Mountain Dew in Australia were not subject to a royalty withholding tax. 

The United Firefighters Union has lost an appeal of two Fair Work Commission decisions, with the Full Federal Court finding that a commissioner did not err in deciding the matter at a later time.

An appeals court has dismissed an environmental advocacy group’s challenge to the extension of two Mach Energy and Whitehaven Coal mega coal mines in NSW, saying the current environmental laws are “ill-suited” to dealing with the global threat of climate change. 

The ATO has lost its appeal of a tribunal decision in favour of Perth land developer Tina Bazzo, with the court rejecting its “all or nothing” approach to a key provision of the Taxation Administration Act.

The Full Federal Court has found the court’s recently-affirmed power to make common fund orders at settlement means the litigation funder that backed two class actions against 7-Eleven is entitled to a $24.5 million cut from a $98 million settlement, in a decision that slammed the parties for a settlement approval process that “went off the rails”, costing group members $2.5 million.

In a loss for the Australian Taxation Office, an appeals court has found that the Liberty Group’s use of corporate and trust ‘silos’ was not an unlawful tax avoidance scheme.

Telecommunications giant SingTel has lost its challenge a ruling in favour of the ATO’s decision to reject over $894,000 in tax deductions related to its $14.2 billion acquisition of Optus.

A judge hearing an appeal by a funder over its cut of a $98 million settlement in franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven has said the $12 million commission was “plainly too little”, and questioned if the class action judge had been “stuck” on the idea that common fund orders are bad.