Departure Prohibition Orders empower the Commissioner of Taxation to restrict a person’s international travel in order to protect the recovery of unpaid tax liabilities. Once considered exceptional, their use has increased in response to rising levels of collectable tax debt. This article examines Part IVA of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 (Cth), analysing the requirements for issuing a Departure Prohibition Order, the scope of the Commissioner’s discretion, and the avenues for revocation and temporary departure. It considers how the regime balances the protection of revenue with the significant intrusion upon individual liberty and whether the current approach has struck an adequate balance. The article concludes that this balance is weighted in favour of revenue protection, a position supported by the asymmetry between the Commissioner’s ability to impose such restraints administratively, whereas regulators such as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission must seek orders of the Court to achieve a comparable result, notwithstanding that both regulators use measures of this nature to protect the public interest.
Transfer pricing controversy has been a continuing focus for revenue authorities, including the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for many decades. The public messaging indicates that this will continue into 2026. Multinational enterprises engaging in business operations in Australia will need to carefully consider their transfer pricing obligations, especially in light of the ATO’s increasing focus and experience in transfer pricing controversy. Where there is a relevant bilateral treaty in place, companies have access to the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) and potentially also Advance Pricing Arrangements (APAs) to manage their transfer pricing affairs. This article discusses the recent developments regarding the treaty-based dispute resolution and dispute prevention mechanisms in Australia. For MAP, the decision in Oracle , as well as the newly revised Manual on Effective Mutual Agreement Procedures improves taxpayer access to MAP in Australia. For APAs, the ATO concluded the final stage of its APA review with the update of PSLA 2015/4 in October 2025. The revisions formalise changes to the APA program regarding the program scope, entry criteria, and case procedures.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is responsible for collecting the substantial revenue required to support Australia’s economic stability, support social service initiatives, and develop public infrastructure. To fulfil this mandate, the Commissioner of Taxation (the Commissioner) has wide-ranging duties and authority to administer, assess, and enforce tax obligations. The administrative nature of the Commissioner’s powers underpins a complex relationship between the government and taxpayers, necessitating a careful balance between administrative efficiency and the protection of taxpayer rights. Indeed, the efficacy of Australia’s self-assessment framework requires voluntary compliance, which can only be achieved when taxpayers perceive integrity in the taxation system. This article contends that one aspect of this balance, the treatment of compelled self-incriminating evidence in tax investigations, has tipped decisively against taxpayer protection, a claim developed across the analysis that follows.
This special edition of the Revenue Law Journal is published in honour of the late Professor Michelle Markham. It brings together personal tributes from colleagues, collaborators, and former students, alongside scholarly contributions that engage with her work and reflect the profound influence she exerted on academic and professional lives. Collectively, these contributions attest not only to Michelle’s intellectual leadership but also to the deep respect and esteem in which she was held across the tax community.
This article honours the scholarly legacy of Professor Michelle Markham by revisiting two of her final contributions to international tax law: her 2022 analysis of the OECD Bilateral Advance Pricing Arrangement Manual (BAPAM) and her 2024 examination of multilateral dispute resolution processes. In this retrospective tribute, we assess whether the data from 2023–2025 supports Michelle’s insights and predictions. The evidence confirms her prescience. BAPA completion times have decreased across major jurisdictions, consistent with the 30-month benchmark she evaluated and the aspirational reduction to 24 months that she endorsed. Soft law has proven effective through peer pressure, benchmarking, and the gradual incorporation of OECD guidance into domestic legal frameworks, validating her scholarly engagement with non-binding instruments. Multilateral arrangements are increasing, as she anticipated, reflecting a shift from bilateral to multilateral solutions, as she documented in her two articles. This article honours Michelle’s intellectual legacy by extending her analysis to assess subsequent developments and contributes to ongoing debates about the effectiveness of soft-law instruments in international tax governance.
