Library Guides: Australian Taxation Law: Cases

Finding all cases on a topic

The reports and databases listed in the box below have selective coverage - that is, not all cases are included. To find all Australian tax cases on a topic, and to find the Most Recent cases, use Jade's Advanced Search (available by clicking on the drop-down menu next to the search now button) to search for cases on a particular tax topic. Either:

choose the broad topic of 'Taxation and Revenue' in the Topic box (which will appear after you click the by topic option, under Judgements in the column on the left). You can then narrow your search by date, jurisdiction, court etc., or
use the Text field, type your search term and select catchwords from the drop-down menu. You can narrow the search by jurisdiction, or court, date etc.

BarNet Jade

Specialist Tax Case Databases and Casebooks

There are several Australian specialist tax report series and databases that include selected cases on all tax matters. These are usually arranged by court and date, and can be searched by keyword.

Australian Taxation Office - Legal Database
(open access)
~ Cases includes decisions from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), Commonwealth Courts and State Supreme Courts - arranged by court and then year. It also includes
~ Decision Impact Statements by the Commissioner of Taxation.
~ Case Decision Summaries - arranged by topic

CCH Online - Australia* This link opens in a new window
~ Australian Tax Decisions (ATD) (1927-1969) and Australian Tax Cases (ATC) (1969 to current)
~ Australian GST and Relevant Tax Cases (AAT and Court decisions - 1941 to current)
Westlaw Australia
~ Australian Tax Reports (ATR) (vol 1 (1969)) to current)
Checkpoint
Checkpoint Cases (UniMelb staff & student access) include:
~ GST Cases - all GST-related cases that have been reported in the Australian Tax Reports
~ recent unreported GST cases and unreported tax cases that will end up in Australian Tax Reports. These cases can be searched (but only as a free text search in the full text of the case), or browsed by eg: year, court etc. To browse, scroll to the bottom of the search screen.
~ Latest Tax & GST Headnotes - part of the Australian Tax Reports online service. It provides users with access to headnotes for recent tax and GST decisions by the High Court, Federal Court, Supreme Courts, District Courts, and relevant state and federal tribunals. The headnotes are published as soon as they're available, prior to their publication in the Australian Tax Reports.

See also up-to-date tax casebooks, which typically provide the basic facts of cases and critical parts of the judgments. For example, see:

Australian taxation law cases 2021: a guide to the leading cases for business, commerce and law students by Kerrie Sadiq
Call Number: High use: KM 356 K1 SADI
Publication Date: Thomson Reuters, 2021
Income Tax: text, materials and essential cases by Michael Kobetsky et al
Call Number: High Use KM 337.11 K1 KOBE
Publication Date: Federation Press, 9th ed, 2016
Australian Tax Casebook by Stephen Barkoczy et al
Call Number: Giblin Eunson Library 343.94052 BARK
Publication Date: OUP, 15th ed, 2021

Finding Cases on Legislative Provisions

To find cases that interpret or discuss specific legislation and/or legislative provisions in Commonwealth, State and Territory Acts:

1. Use CASES databases in the following resources to search for the provision/section:

Westlaw Australia
(UniMelb staff & student access) - to the right hand side of the search bar, select 'Advanced Search', use the Legislation Cited (Title) and Legislation Cited (Provision) search boxes. You can also narrow the search to court, date, words in the text, etc.
Lexis+ Australia
(UniMelb staff & student access) - select Search: Everything >> AU Cases from the search box >> Advanced Search. Type your searches in Legislation Title field and Words and Phrases Legislation Judicially Considered field. You can also narrow the search to court, date, words in the text, etc.

2. Use Legislation databases and print tools that provide access to cases on each provision:

CCH Online - Australia* This link opens in a new window
Australian Federal Income Tax Reporter (ITAA 1997) and Australian Federal Tax Reporter (ITAA 1936 and others) on CCH iKnowConnect (UniMelb staff & student access) contain section-by-section treatment of all Commonwealth tax Acts - including cases, tax rulings and commentary.

The latest print edition of Australian Income Tax Legislation (CCH) has a section at the beginning of vol 1 (online book) entitled CCH Tax Legislation Annotator. This provides caselaw on a section-by-section basis, i.e. each legislative section listed refers to tribunal and court decisions, and ATO rulings on that specific section.
TimeBase : online legislation research
LawOne on Timebase (UniMelb staff & student access) - use browse or search to navigate to the specific Act and then the section. If there are any cases on this section, there will be a CASES button in the top right-hand corner. Note that:
This database is selective in its inclusion of cases and will, therefore, have fewer cases than JADE (see below), but the cases will be highly relevant.
The cases are summaries only - the full citation is provided so you can find the full text of the case in a caselaw database
Lexis+ Australia
LawNow Legislation on Lexis + Australia (UniMelb staff & student access) - Type in an Act, click on the section your want to look at, click on view legislation citator. Will get a list of cases, subordinate legislation, secondary material and annotated legislation related to that section of The Act.
BarNet Jade
(open access) - either browse to the legislation or start to type it into the search box at the top of the screen - a word wheel will find the legislation - select 'document in JADE' from the drop down menu. Then scroll to the section - there will be a green 'jademark' on the right if the section has been cited. Clicking on the + sign will turn the jademark blue and open a list of cases, showing the citation and linking to each case.