Page:Mesha Feet Pty Ltd v Allen acting as Deputy Commissioner of Taxation.pdf/16

 56 The final piece of the eight pieces of legislation is s 8J of the TAA. It provides that, for the purposes of Subdiv B of Div 2 of Pt III of the TAA, "accounting records" includes bills of exchange and promissory notes. The statutory stipulation as to the breadth of what constitutes an "accounting record" for the purposes of that subdivision says nothing of how tax debts may be paid.

57 Accordingly, none of the pieces of legislation relied on either assist in establishing that tax debts can by paid by promissory notes or bills of exchange, or suggest that there is any tension or disharmony in Federal legislation if tax debts cannot be paid by such means.

58 Mesha Feet also referred to and relied on a number of other provisions in the Bills of Exchange Act, as well as various legal and general dictionary definitions of "note", "bank note", "cash", "cheque", "promissory note", "negotiable instrument", and "bill of exchange". None of that material assists Mesha Feet as none of it supports the proposition that a taxation liability may be discharged by delivery of instruments of the kind delivered by Mesha Feet in purported discharge of its taxation liabilities.

59 I also do not accept that the Defendant became bound to accept the "Promissory Note" or the "Bill of Exchange" by virtue of the ATO's failure to return those instruments within the stipulated time frames (or at all), its failure to return the cheque, its banking of the cheque, or its failure to write back to Mesha Feet expressly rejecting the proffered means of discharging its tax debts. The self-serving statements embedded by Mesha Feet and Mr Tobgui in the correspondence do not elevate the "Promissory Note" or the "Bill of Exchange" to means of payment approved by the Commissioner.

60 While it would have been desirable for the ATO to write back to Mr Tobgui and Mesha Feet expressly rejecting the proffered means of payment, and while the ATO's own Practice Statement recognises that the ATO should write back in response to proposals it does not accept, its failure to do so does not make the ineffective forms of payment effective to discharge Mesha Feet's tax liabilities.

61 I also do not accept that the "Statement of Account" issued by the ATO to Mesha Feet was an "offer" to contract with Mesha Feet regarding the discharge of its tax liabilities. It was nothing of the sort. It was, as was plain on the face of the document, a statement of the amounts that the ATO considered Mesha Feet owed to it. It was not open to Mr Tobgui to load it up with annotations and thereby purport to create some kind of contract. There plainly was no Mesha Feet Pty Ltd v Allen acting as Deputy Commissioner of Taxation [2024] FCA 680