Commissioner of Taxation v Sharpcan Pty Ltd, [2019] HCA 36 -- summary under Purpose/Intention

By services, 23 October, 2019

Before finding that the taxpayer’s expenditures for 10-year assignable gaming licences (“GMEs”), which it required in order to be permitted to continue using gaming machines on its hotel premises, were capital expenditures, the Court stated (at para. 49):

[T]he evidence … demonstrated that the Trustee was motivated to purchase the GMEs by the realisation that it could not continue to carry on its gaming business unless it did so. Motive, however, is different from purpose. [T]he motive for a person's conduct is the person's reason for engaging in it. By contrast, the purpose of a person's conduct is the end that is sought to be accomplished by it. Here, although it may be accepted that the Trustee's motive for purchasing the GMEs was that the Trustee wished to continue to carry on its gaming business as it had done up to that point, the end that the Trustee subjectively sought to accomplish in outlaying the purchase price of the 18 GMEs, and thus the subjective purpose of the expenditure, was to acquire the 18 GMEs necessary to continue to trade. That was also the objective purpose of the outlay. Looked at objectively from a practical and business point of view, the purpose of paying the purchase price of the GMEs was to acquire the GMEs as an asset of the Trustee to be used in the course of the Trustee's hotel business.

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purpose distinguished from motive
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