Australian Senate Passes GMT Bills

On July 4, 2024, draft legislation was submitted to Parliament. This includes the Taxation (Multinational-Global and Domestic Minimum Tax) Bill 2024, Taxation (Multinational-Global and Domestic Minimum Tax) Imposition Bill 2024 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Multinational-Global and Domestic Minimum Tax) (Consequential) Bill 2024. 

On November 26, 2024, the bills to implement the Pillar 2 GMT in Australia were passed by the Senate. They now await Royal Assent for enactment. 

On August 22, 2024, the draft GMT law was amended during the legislative process to exclude “GloBE Securitisation Entities” from joint and several liability under the GloBE Rules.

It should be noted that on March 21, 2024, the Australian Treasury released  draft rules to provide the detailed rules for the application of the GloBE rules (for example, computation of GloBE Income and effective tax rate calculations). These were not introduced into Parliament and the government intends to finalise the subordinate legislation in the form of ministerial rules, which is necessary for the bill to operate effectively. The bill allows for any ministerial rules created after the bill is passed to operate retrospectively, being necessary to align with the bill’s retrospective application from January 1, 2024.

This approach also ensures that future Agreed Administrative Guidance released by the OECD can be more easily incorporated into the Australian regime.