Azleena binti Md Khairuddin

On the court record

Azleena binti Md Khairuddin appears in the reported corpus as revenue-law counsel, and her reported matters read as a tour of Malaysian tax litigation. On stamp duty, she was engaged in a Court of Appeal appeal over whether an asset purchase agreement for the sale of telecommunication towers and associated assets constituted a "conveyance on sale" attracting ad valorem duty under section 21(1) and Item 32(a) of the First Schedule to the Stamp Act 1949, and whether the towers were "goods, wares or merchandise" within the statutory exception. On income tax, she appeared in a matter examining whether an independent non-executive director was an employee — engaging the master-and-servant relationship and the degree-of-control test under sections 4(a), 4(b), 91(3) and 113(2) of the Income Tax Act 1967, the Bursa Malaysia listing requirements and the evidentiary value of EA forms — together with time-barred assessments and penalties.

Her judicial-review work against the revenue authority is prominent. She was engaged as respondent's counsel in challenges to decisions of the Ketua Pengarah Hasil Dalam Negeri (the Director General of Inland Revenue), including a judicial review under Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012 over whether section 4C of the Income Tax Act 1967 — declared unconstitutional in the Wiramuda litigation — was to take effect prospectively or retrospectively. She also appeared in a Court of Appeal matter on the deductibility of interest expenditure, where the court held that a return of capital received from a real estate investment trust was taxable income and that section 33(1) of the Income Tax Act 1967 does not permit apportionment of interest expenditure, rendering a public ruling ultra vires and allowing the full deduction. The reported matters establish her as a specialist in stamp duty, income tax and revenue judicial review. In the stamp-duty appeal the court also weighed the effect of the future completion of the transfer of the telecommunication towers on whether the instrument fell to be charged as a conveyance on sale, and how the statutory exception for goods, wares or merchandise applies to fixed infrastructure of that kind.