AUSTRALIA: Murdoch's mom, 99, beats Australian tax bill

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (Associated Press - Globe and Mail, Toronto) May 28, 2008: News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch's 99-year-old mother beat Australian tax authorities in court Wednesday over a tax bill on an $81-million (U.S.) payment. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch had appealed an Australian Taxation Office order to pay tax on the sum following a 1994 reorganization of family trusts. The quantity of the tax bill was not disclosed. An administrative court rejected her first appeal, but three Federal Court judges unanimously upheld her appeal Wednesday and agreed that she owed no tax on the sum. The Murdoch matriarch's husband was the late Sir Keith Murdoch, from whom Rupert Murdoch, the 76-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of a U.S.-based global media empire, inherited his first newspaper. © Copyright 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.