The Howard Government (especially Costello) loathed the entire tax driven agriculture MIS industry with a passion and left to their own device would have driven the forestry MIS's out of business as well. That was only retained due to some gritty lobbying by the then usual pro-forestry MP suspects (Wilson Tuckey etc). But Costello and the then Deputy Treasurer were certain that the ATO already had the powers to kill this off and that leaving it to the ATO was a much more politically safe move when there were likely to be a heap of jobs lost.
Fact remains that I doubt anyone in the Rudd government is anymore happy about the rorts and asset distortions that were taking place in the industry under the old structure. That being the case then it would be expected that if the ATO lost the case re non-forestry schemes then legislation would pretty promptly be introduced to drive a stake through the industries heart once and for all.
The only challenge confronting such legislation was that of not dragging in all the other MIS schemes that operate in unlisted property etc etc. Its doable though and should be expected in the case of a loss by the ATO.
Cheers,
TIM Price at posting:
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