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Tax risks of low or zero interest loans to private companies

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Low or zero interest loans (LOZILs) to companies by their shareholders are generally not a tax problem in themselves.

Total Holdings

The well-regarded 1979 Full Federal Court decision in F.C. of T. v. Total Holdings (Australia) Pty. Ltd. [1979] FCA 53 allowed a tax deduction to a holding company for its interest costs of borrowing despite the holding company on-lending the borrowing to its operating subsidiary at zero interest.

The deduction for the whole of interest paid on the borrowing was allowed to the holding company as it could show its purpose in using the money borrowed was to improve the profitability of the subsidiary. That improvement meant an increased likelihood of the holding company deriving assessable dividend or interest income from the subsidiary company.

No Division 7A deemed dividend

When a LOZIL is by a private company to another private company who may either be:

  1. a shareholder of the lender; or
  2. associated with a shareholder of the lender;

the question of whether the LOZIL could be treated as a deemed dividend under Division 7A of Part III of the Income Tax Assessment Act (ITAA) 1936 arises. A LOZIL would not be immune from deemed dividend treatment under section 109M in Division 7A as it would be:

  1. neither a loan in the ordinary course of the business of the lender;
  2. nor on the usual terms on which the lender makes loans to other parties at arm’s length.

However section 109K excludes loans to standalone private companies that are not trustees of trusts from deemed dividend treatment under Division 7A:

A private company is not taken under section 109C or 109D to pay a dividend because of a payment or loan the private company makes to another company.

Note: This does not apply to a payment or loan to a company in its capacity as trustee. (See section 109ZE.)

Section 109K of the ITAA 1936

The protrusive LOZIL

Despite the above low or zero interest marks a LOZIL as uncommercial and potentially attracts greater scrutiny of:

  • the reason for the LOZIL; and
  • the transactions of a taxpayer to which the LOZIL relates;

by the Commissioner of Taxation.

From a company lender’s or a company borrower’s perspectives it is generally preferable that interest is charged and paid to as close to a commercial rate as possible if the Commissioner’s (See my blog “Only a loan? Impugnable loans, proving them for tax and shams” https://wp.me/p6T4vg-8a), non-loan party shareholder’s and creditor’s (interested parties) scrutiny of the loan is not to be attracted.

If, after that, a LOZIL to a company is still thought worthwhile to make then the company should carefully record the purpose of the loan to reduce opportunity for interested parties to allege the LOZIL was made for nefarious or unacceptable purposes to benefit the recipient.

LOZILs as de facto shareholder capital funding

LOZILs are commonly used by shareholders as de facto capital to fund private companies. A LOZIL has the disadvantage that it is not counted in the cost base of the shareholder’s shares for capital gains tax purposes. A LOZIL can complicate the position for shareholders either:

  • looking to sell their shares; or
  • to project a clean balance sheet of the company when the company is looking for more funding.

A tidying up of ad hoc and lazy LOZIL arrangements is frequently a feature of private company funding and restructuring deals.

Loans at will

These LOZILs are typically at will, that is with no set terms either for the payment of interest on the loan or the repayment of principal. They arise often in the void where a private company receiving shareholder funding has omitted to perform a routine share capital issue to the shareholders in exchange for the funding.

When might a LOZIL be a tax problem?

It is not possible to be definitive about when a LOZIL may be a tax problem without understanding the wider context, especially tax avoidance or illegal contexts, of why a LOZIL is being made. Usually LOZILs attract greater scrutiny from the ATO because of their uncommercial character, as stated. A LOZIL often needs to be put in place with some care so what the LOZIL is intended to achieve is above board.

Here are some specific situations where a LOZIL to a company will give rise to tax problems (definitely not an exhaustive list! – this is a list I may add to):

  • a LOZIL by an employer or associate of the employer to a company that is an associate of an employee subject to fringe benefits tax;
  • a LOZIL to a company as trustee of a trust by an outsider to the trust where the LOZIL is productive of scheme assessable income which cannot be applied to reduce trust losses: Division 270 of Schedule 2F to the ITAA 1936; and
  • where there may be cross-border transfer pricing see Draft Practical Compliance Guideline PCG 2017/4DC2.

Woes of a beneficiary of a discretionary trust in getting a tax deduction for interest: Chadbourne v. C of T.

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In the recent Administrative Appeals Tribunal case Chadbourne and Commissioner of Taxation (Taxation) [2020] AATA 2441 (10 July 2020) the AAT confirmed the disallowance of tax deductions to Mr. D. Chadbourne (the Applicant).

The Applicant was a beneficiary of the D & M Chadbourne Family Trust (DMCFT) and the Applicant was denied deductions for:

  • interest on money borrowed by the Applicant to fund the acquisition of real estate and shares by the DMCFT; and
  • other expenses incurred by the Applicant expended;

so the DMCFT could earn income.

The discretionary trust

The DMCFT was a discretionary trust. In Chadbourne Deputy President Britten-Jones usefully described a discretionary trust:

I note that the meaning of the term ‘discretionary trust’ is disclosed by a consideration of usage rather than doctrine, and the usage is descriptive rather than normative. It is used to identify a species of express trust, one where the entitlement of beneficiaries to income, or to corpus, or both, is not immediately ascertainable; rather, the beneficiaries are selected from a nominated class by the trustee or some other person and this power (which may be a special or hybrid power) may be exercisable once or from time to time.

Chadbourne at paragraph 8

The mere expectancy of a beneficiary of a discretionary trust

Because the beneficiaries of a discretionary trust are not immediately ascertainable and are to be selected, a prospective beneficiary only has an expectancy of earning trust income unless and until the beneficiary is so selected by the trustee to take income:

Unless and until the Trustee of the discretionary trust exercises the discretion to distribute a share of the income of the trust estate to the applicant, the applicant’s interest in the income of the discretionary trust is a mere expectancy. It is neither vested in interest nor vested in possession, and the applicant has no right to demand and receive payment of it.

Chadbourne at paragraph 57

or in the case of a beneficiary who takes in default of exercise of discretion they have no more than a similar expectancy.

The Applicant was a beneficiary of the DMCFT with an expectancy interest.

The available tax deduction

The Applicant could not satisfy the first limb of the general deduction provision, now in the Income Tax Assessment Act (ITAA) 1997, which allows an income tax deduction for a loss or outgoing to the extent:

it is incurred in gaining or producing your assessable income 

paragraph 8-1(1)(a) of the ITAA 1997 (emphasis added)

In Chadbourne the Applicant’s expenditure was incurred to gain or produce income for the trustee of the DMCFT, a separate legal entity. Applying authority including Federal Commissioner of Taxation v Munro (1926) 38 CLR 153, Antonopoulos and FCT [2011] AATA 431; 84 ATR 311, Case M36 (1980) 80 ATC 280,  Commissioner of Taxation v Roberts and Smith (1992) 37 FCR 246, where Hill J. referred to Ure v Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1981) 50 FLR 219, Fletcher v Commissioner of Taxation (1991) 173 CLR 1 and other cases, the AAT required a nexus between loss or outgoings of the Applicant and the assessable income of the Applicant; not the DMCFT. Although the Applicant stood to earn income indirectly as the likely beneficiary of the DMCFT the AAT found:

The Trust is a discretionary trust the terms of which require the Trustee to exercise a discretion as to whom a distribution of net income is to be made.  It is an inherent requirement of the exercise of that discretion that it be given real and genuine consideration. There must be ‘the exercise of an active discretion’. There were numerous beneficiaries in the Trust.  There was no certainty provided by the terms of the Trust that the Trustee would exercise its discretionary power of appointment in favour of the applicant.

Chadbourne at paragraph 53

and the Applicant thus had not incurred the expenditure in gaining or producing the assessable income of the Applicant.

Why did the Applicant run the AAT appeal?

The Applicant in Chadbourne was self-represented. With the benefit of professional advice or assistance the Applicant may have:

  • more readily foreseen the outcome of his appeal to the AAT which, in the light of the authority applied by Deputy President Britten-Jones, could be seen as inevitable; or
  • moreover, arranged the loan to achieve the required section 8-1 nexus between the outgoings and the assessable income of a taxpayer.

Safer alternative 1 – trustee loan

The most obvious alternative would have been for the trustee of the trust to have been the borrower and to have directly incurred the relevant expenses though those actions would have been different commercial arrangements to those that were done.

These actions may have been more complicated and expensive to arrange: not the least because the financier may have required the Applicant to personally guarantee repayment of the loan by the trustee of the trust which was a corporate trustee with limited liability. Nonetheless these precautions would have ensured section 8-1 deductions were available to the trustee of the trust.

(Somewhat) safer alternative 2 – on-loan to the trustee

The other and perhaps commercially easier alternative would have been an on-loan of the borrowed funds by the Applicant to the trust.

The Applicant in Chadbourne may have belatedly considered an on-loan solution. At paragraph 11 of the AAT decision it was observed that the Applicant had abandoned a contention that there was a “written funding agreement” between the Applicant and the trustee of the DMCFT which the Commissioner had suggested was an invention to assist the Applicant in the appeal.

In the event of a genuine on-loan the trustee of the trust would hold the borrowed funds as loan funds with a clarity as to whom interest and principal is to be repaid rather than as a capital contribution or gift to the trust without that clarity.

On-loan – interest free

Clearly the on-loan by the Applicant to the trustee of the trust should not be interest free as the Applicant then faces the Chadbourne problem of having no assessable income with which to justify a section 8-1 deduction. In the words of Taxation Determination TD 2018/9 Income tax: deductibility of interest expenses incurred by a beneficiary of a discretionary trust on borrowings on-lent interest-free to the trustee:

A beneficiary of a discretionary trust who borrows money, and on-lends all or part of that money to the trustee of the discretionary trust interest-free, is usually not entitled to a deduction for any interest expenditure incurred by the beneficiary in relation to the borrowed money on-lent to the trustee under section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997)…  

TD 2018/9 – paragraph 1

On-loan – at low interest

An on-loan at low interest was arranged in Ure v. Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1981) 11 ATR 484. In Ure the borrower borrowed funds at up to 12.5% p.a. interest and on-lent the funds to his wife and his discretionary trust at 1% p.a. The Full Federal Court found that the deduction Mr. Ure could claim under the first limb of the general deduction provision, sub-section 51(1) of the ITAA 1936, was limited to the 1% p.a. by which the interest income earned by Mr. Ure from his on-loan was confined.

On loan – at equivalent interest

It thus follows from TD 2018/9, Ure and Chadbourne that, to achieve deductibility in full for interest on funds borrowed and on-lent to a related discretionary trust, the interest earned by the beneficiary/on-lender on the on-loan should be the interest payable by the on-lender on the loan from the financier. This should leave the beneficiary/borrower in a tax neutral position on his or her loan on-loaned with assessable interest earned under the on-loan equalling deductible interest paid on the loan.

Related loan issues

As the on-loan is a related loan there are further considerations which will attract the scrutiny of the Commissioner:

A related on-loan should ideally be carefully documented and it should be clarified that the beneficiary/on-lender has an indefeasible right to the interest even though the on-lender is a related party of the borrower. It is also important that commitments in the on-loan agreement are met and generally interest due to the beneficiary/on-lender shouldn’t be capitalised and, especially, shouldn’t be aggregated with unpaid present entitlements due to the beneficiary.

The Commissioner could take these positions:

  • that the on-loan with interest is inadequately documented and can’t be proved so accounting entries capitalising interest shouldn’t be considered conclusive; or
  • the on-loan may be documented but it is a sham and the failure of the trust to pay interest when due shows this.

See my blog post at this site “Only a loan? Impugnable loans, proving them for tax and shams” https://wp.me/p6T4vg-8a which shows the fallibility of related party loans when these questions are contested with the Commissioner.

Woes with hybrid trusts

A hybrid trust, also a descriptive rather than a normative structure, can also fit the Deputy President Britten-Jones formulation of a discretionary trust where the entitlement of beneficiaries of the hybrid trust to income is not immediately ascertainable and is subject to the exercise of a discretion. It has been recognised,  including in the Commissioner’s Taxpayer Alert TA 2008/3 Uncommercial use of certain trusts that the considerations of the AAT in Chadbourne can similarly apply to deny a section 8-1 deduction to the holder of an interest in a hybrid trust who incurs expenditure to earn income through a hybrid trust structure.

In passing I note my wariness of hybrid trusts which are typically aggressive and sometimes tax abusive arrangements. The Commissioner’s Tax Alerts are particularly directed against tax aggressive activity.

That said, the trust in the case of Forrest v Commissioner of Taxation [2010] FCAFC 6, which was referred to in a citation (sic.) in Chadbourne, appears to have been an instance of a hybrid trust where entitlement of unit holders to ordinary income was ascertainable and not subject to a discretion. On appeal to the Full Federal Court, the unit holders in Forrest could establish a nexus between borrowing expenditure incurred and assessable income.

Only a loan? Impugnable loans, proving them for tax and shams

Is a loan just a sum advanced to be repaid by a borrower to a lender? Accountants understand that a loan can be a nimble device to explain and show why money and value is elsewhere even when the relationship between the borrower and the lender is not arms length or clear.

Necessary elements of a loan

So a loan is recognised. It is clearly recorded in the books of account and appears as a liability in the financial statements of the “borrower”, the “lender” or frequently both. The individual, who is the controlling mind of the borrower, says yes, it is a loan, and the apparent lender, who has an established relationship with that individual, doesn’t say it is not. Will that apparent loan be accepted as a loan by all persons interested?

A number of recent tax cases in the aggressive tax planning space show that, in those kinds of cases, the Commissioner of Taxation is prepared to commit significant resource and effort into:

  1. disabusing courts that arrangements with the appearance of loans are loans in fact; and
  2. pursuing high profile tax scheme promoters and their clients using arrangements based on inpugnable loans.

A wide but demarcated construct

There is no doubt that a loan is a wide concept. In Taxation Ruling TR 2010/3 Income tax: Division 7A loans: trust entitlements, the Commissioner took a wide view of what amounts to a loan, or to what amounts to at least one or more of:

(a) an advance of money; and

(b) a provision of credit or any other form of financial accommodation; and(d) a transaction (whatever its terms or form) which in substance effects a loan of money.

(c) a payment of an amount for, on account of, on behalf of or at the request of, an entity, if there is an express or implied obligation to repay the amount; and

(d) a transaction (whatever its terms or form) which in substance effects a loan of money.

included as a loan under sub-section 109D(3) of the Income Tax Assessment Act (“ITAA”) 1936

which triggers a deemed dividend to a shareholder or an associate under Division 7A of the ITAA 1936. The “loan” regime in Division 7A is an exception though. Generally, if a taxpayer can establish that a sum received is received as an advance of a loan, that receipt can explain why that money or value is not in the nature of income that may be assessable to the taxpayer. That is a vital capability when the schema of Australian income tax recovery is “asset betterment” allowing the Commissioner to assert that money or value received is income unless the taxpayer can prove that it is otherwise.

Hart v Commissioner of Taxation (No 4)

So it was in Hart v Commissioner of Taxation (No 4) [2017] FCA 572, a decision of Bromwich J. of the Federal Court, concerning the personal tax affairs of the senior tax partner of Brisbane-based law firm and tax planning and tax scheme services provider Cleary Hoare. Mr Hart asserted that the amount in dispute in that case was a loan to him by an associated trust clearly recorded as a credit loan in the books of the trust.

The firm of Cleary Hoare was operated by a practice trust (“the Practice Trust”) in which discretionary trusts of the partners owned units in the Practice Trust which, it transpired, was not structured in accord with Queensland legal professional practice rules. The discretionary trust of Mr Hart owning units in the Practice Trust was referred to in the decision as the Outlook Trust.

Loan or benefit or both to the taxpayer (“borrower”)?

During the 1997 income year, the Outlook Trust included $220,398 in its assessable income as a distribution to it as a unitholder in the Practice Trust under section 97 of the ITAA 1936. The distribution was routed by a series of on-distributions through a network of interposed trust entities associated with Cleary Hoare, or its associates, to a company carrying significant tax losses, Retail Technology Pty. Ltd. and by the making of gifts by way of promissory notes to and through entities that were associated with Cleary Hoare or its associates, including Mr Hart. The Commissioner took issue with the last flow of the money through the arrangement back to Mr Hart. The Commissioner viewed that last flow as a distribution to Mr Hart for the benefit of Mr Hart. For his part, Mr Hart contended that the payment was a loan to him from the Outlook Trust, or alternatively from the Practice Trust, and that the payment was so recorded in the books of account of the Outlook Trust.

The Commissioner also pressed a number of alternative cases including a case that, even if the payments were not trust distributions, the application of general anti-avoidance provision in Part IVA of the ITAA 1936 meant that, in the absence of the scheme, the money would still have been paid to Mr Hart and instead been taxable, to which Mr Hart, for his part, contended that such payments would not have taken place in the absence of the scheme.

Present entitlement by benefiting trust beneficiaries

One of the alternative cases run by the Commissioner was that payments benefiting Mr Hart of at least $84,615.52 of the $220,398 were assessable directly to Mr Hart who was also a special unitholder, as trust distributions to him by the Practice Trust. In the absence of a sustainable case that the $220,398 or any part of it was a loan, the court could find that sections 95A and 101 of the ITAA 1936, which have the effect of deeming payments to or for the benefit of a beneficiary to be payments to which the beneficiary is presently entitled, applied to bring the $84,615.52 into the special unitholder’s assessable income for the 1997 income year.

Although this finding did not directly inform the character of the remaining $135,782, this application of sections 97, 95A and 101 of the ITAA 1936 to at least $84,615.52 of the amount in dispute, which the court accepted, did not assist Mr Hart to prove that the assessment of the greater $220,398 was excessive.

How Mr Hart’s loan contention failed

The court deduced from the submissions of the parties that whether the 1997 assessments of Mr. Hart were excessive or not turned on whether Mr Hart received the $220,398 as a loan. Mr Hart’s counsel contended that the evidence of Mr Hart, including the accounts of the Outlook Trust which showed the borrowing to Mr Hart, was sufficient to show that the funds had been loaned to Mr Hart. However other evidence caused this contention to unravel, viz.:

  1. there was nothing in writing to record or otherwise evidence a loan;
  2. there was no interest paid or payable under the purported loan;
  3. there were no repayments required or made under the purported loan, despite more than 19 years having elapsed since the advance of money under the purported loan (and the “creditor” trust had not traded for 15 years); and
  4. there were records of contemporaneous bank statements showing “pay” or “sol[icitor] pay” which were made on a fortnightly basis to a bank account of Mr and Mrs Hart between at least 5 July 1996 and 23 April 1997.

In addition to this evidence, which the court found, of itself, compelling, was the coup de grâce of a credit approval request by Mr. Hart to Suncorp Bank for two loans in 1999 in which Mr Hart, as an applicant providing personal details, appeared to state he had income of precisely $220,398 in 1997. The court observed that stating this, if it was nothing more than antecedent indebtedness, was hardly going to assist in securing a further loan, so it didn’t make sense as a loan.

Was the loan a sham?

Mr Hart’s counsel asserted that, as the Commissioner had not demonstrated that the purported loan was a sham, the court was obliged to accept the evidence lead by Mr Hart viz. his testimony and the accounts of the Outlook Trust, that there had been a loan. The court observed that a sham requires there to be a purported transaction which is falsely presented as being genuine. The court agreed with the Commissioner that, in this case, there was thus no sham loan, but that no loan had been proven to exist with the burden of proving that there was a loan on the taxpayer.

Loan terms in writing?

In Hart v Commissioner of Taxation (No 4), the taxpayer relied on an undocumented related party loan recorded only in the accounts of a related trust which gave the Commissioner leeway to run a case based on there being no loan at all. That leeway is reduced, of course, if the loan is reduced to writing in a loan agreement. However if that writing does not present the real arrangement then the loan can still be impugned by the Commissioner and the issue of sham will more likely arise with that false presentation.

Commissioner of Taxation v Normandy Finance and Investments Asia Pty Ltd

The taxpayer in Commissioner of Taxation v Normandy Finance and Investments Asia Pty Ltd [2016] FCAFC 180 faced that predicament.

Mr. Townsing was a client of Vanda Gould, a Sydney accountant and offshore tax scheme promoter. The taxpayer and two other companies were controlled by Mr Townsing. The taxpayer asserted that these companies were borrowers under loans from three companies controlled by Mr Gould recorded in written loan arrangements with those companies.

The Townsing controlled companies received substantial advances from the Gould controlled companies. The Commissioner asserted that payments to the Townsing controlled companies were sham borrowings used by Mr Townsing to bring assets held for his benefit into Australia and that they were thus assessable income of the companies.

The judges in this case noted the excessive length of the submissions of more than 1000 pages of submission material, ostensibly in support of oral argument at trial, to the primary judge by the taxpayer and the Commissioner.

Edmonds J. of the Federal Court, (Normandy Finance Pty Ltd v FCT [2015] FCA 1420) found for the taxpayer at first instance but did so on what was to prove a precarious basis. Edmonds J. found that the loans were not shams, even though the loan documents revealed disguises and pretences directed to demonstrating that the loans were at arms length, when the evidence was that the advances under the purported loans happened differently, and not at arm’s length. Still Edmonds J. found that, despite these irregularities, elements of the loans, including commitments to repay the loans, could be indentified in the evidence and so the loans were allowed to stand.

Appeals

The Commissioner appealed to the Full Federal Court. All three judges of the Full Federal Court closely considered the evidence that was before Edmonds J., and the majority, Jagot and Davies JJ., found that the basis on which Edmonds J. had recognised the loan arrangements as loans, distinct from the impugned purported written loan agreements, was expressly negated by the evidence of Mr Townsing under cross-examination by senior counsel for the Commissioner. The majority concluded that, in his evidence, Mr Townsing had rebuffed the facts upon which Edmonds J. had relied to find that there were loans not shams. Logan J., in the minority, disagreed with the majority and agreed with the trial judge’s approach to the evidence.

The taxpayer sought special leave to appeal from the Full Federal Court to the High Court but leave was refused by the High Court on the basis that the taxpayer did not have sufficient prospects of success of reversing the Full Federal Court majority’s findings.

Take-outs

Documenting a loan in writing reduces the scope of the Commissioner to assert there is no loan leaving the taxpayer, carrying the burden of the onus of proof, to prove the loan.

However documenting the loan may be a two-edged sword in contentious situations. Forcing the Commissioner to assert a sham will not necessarily give a taxpayer, who must disprove a sham in Part IVC of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 tax appeal proceedings, an advantage. Costs in litigation with the Commissioner to redress the consequences of a loan inadequately documented, can be significant. Poor documenting may have the adverse effect of revealing aspects of the arrangement that are not real or genuine. In other words, the pretences in the document and later compromising admissions by a taxpayer asserting the loan may irretrievably taint the believable in an asserted loan document and cause a loan to fail as a construct for a payment.

Loans not at arms length are the most likely to be challenged by the Commissioner. Trust beneficiary loan accounts may be held up to particular scrutiny. If a purported trust beneficiary loan is impugned sections 95A and 101 can trigger present entitlement to payments/advances to the beneficiary under the “loan” as assessable income.

These cases and the earlier Full Federal Court case of Millar v FCT [2016] FCAFC 94:

  1. which again involved an impugned loan devised by the Sydney accountant Vanda Gould for other clients; and
  2. where the taxpayers opted not to admit evidence from Mr Gould but relied on evidence of the relevant loan only from the lay taxpayer parties to the purported loan;

show that the Federal Court will not readily allow an appeal based on such restricted evidence as sufficient to prove the existence of a loan or to disprove a sham in the process of determining whether an assessment is excessive and that the High Court is reluctant to allow appeals to disturb these Federal Court decisions.