Horse 3506 - JEFF VADER V COMMISIONER OF TAXATION [2025] - Judgement

 JEFF VADER V COMMISIONER OF TAXATION [2025] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3506/1

This week we received the following correspondence from a Mr Jeff Vader, who appears to be in command of some kind of galactic delivery company or some such. He has given us the following taxation question: 

Dear Fake Internet Court of Australia,

I am the Operations Manager for a very large off-world firm which is resident in Australia for taxation purposes. I wish to claim depreciation for my Defence Sphere Mk 1 (DS-1) and am wondering what the appropriate rate for a Defence Sphere is. 

The construction costs were just over One Trillion Galactic Credits and it became operational on August 1st.

Thank you, 

Lord Jeff Vader of Cheem, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet and Military Executor, ATM, KFC, BBQ.

This is an interesting case as The Fake Internet Court of Australia is not often asked to make interlocutory orders or non-binding arbitration rulings, however we are still prepared to make a preliminary hearing as an  obiter dicta in lieu of further passage to a court with proper jurisdiction. 

These are the facts as this court sees them:

The "Defence Sphere 1" as described by Jeff Vader in his correspondence, appears to be some very large machine which is capable of mass destruction on a planetary scale. Colloquially within the documentation it is referred to as a "Death Star", though it is not a star, however it seems to be quite capable of doing death to people and things.

There is not explicit provision for spacecraft, though Communications Satellites and Satellite Earth Station Electronic Assets generally have an effective life of 15 or 10 years depending on the use case. 

We consider an orbital defence sphere to be a habitable spacecraft and on the face of it, it looks more like the example of Aeroplanes (general use); in which case the Defence Sphere 1 likely has an  effective life of 20 years, which is similar to fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. 

We suspect that for a highly specialised asset such as this, that the Australian Taxation Office is going to want to make a Private Ruling based on like technical data and industry experience; from an appointed expert witness.

Final Judgement:

We determine that the Defence Sphere 1 is analogous to an Aircraft (general use) and as such that it has a comparable effective life of 20 years.

As such we determine that:

A - it has a Straight Line depreciation rate of 5%

B - it has a Diminishing Value depreciation rate of 10%

Whilst we can not explicitly determine the actual conversion rate between Universal Galactic Credits (UGC) and Australian Dollars (AUD), the use case seems to be that the ratio should read something in the order of 1 UCG : 6 AUD.

If it follows that the initial capital costs were One Trillion Galactic Credits, then the take up rate should be about $6,000,000,000,000. 

The actual amount of Depreciation Expense will need to be decided upon by the client, and the method retained for the life of the asset. 

This court hereby advises that the takeup rates as stated above be used, and further advises that an amount of Depreciation being claimed in a Tax Return as a business expense of $300bn which by itself is more than 16% of the GDP of Australia, is likely to cause at least a few raised eyebrows at the Australian Taxation Office. We hope that the ATO does not bring hateration and holleration to proceedings.

We trust that our mutual friends at the Australian Taxation Office will adhere to the advice given in this judgement, because we have seen what happens in the Catering Department if you are not happy with the moisture and condensation on food trays.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3506/1 - Ed)