RSA
Research School of Accounting
Tax law and policy, Tax-motivated profit shifting, Contract and commercial law, The emergence of Australian common law.
Sonali Walpola is a Lecturer of Commercial Law and Tax Law. Sonali researches in the areas of taxation law and policy, the common law's historical and contemporary mechanisms for enforcing promises, and the High Court of Australia's role in the development of an Australian common law. Sonali’s work has been published in esteemed journals including Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, Australian Tax Forum and Federal Law Review. Her Australian Tax Forum piece identifies anomalies and unnecessary complexity in legislation governing the capital gains taxation of trusts, providing recommendations for how the regime could be re-designed. As such, it is highly relevant to regulators. Sonali’s Federal Law Review paper examines how Australia's declining political, economic and social ties with Britain have led to the incremental development of an independent Australian common law, and her article in Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal reveals an ideological shift in the High Court of Australia’s attitude to changing the common law in the period 1987 to 2016. As lead academic of the Federal Government-funded ANU Tax Clinic, Sonali is responsible for governance of the clinic and, ultimately, ensuring it remains a compliant and effective part of the broader National Tax Clinics program. Sonali is also the Co-Editor of Austaxpolicy, a forum for the debate and analysis of pressing domestic and international tax policy issues.