Cheong Wen Yie

On the court record

Cheong Wen Yie appears in the corpus across revenue litigation and constitutional law, arguing at every level from the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) to the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan). Two of the reported matters concern the reach of judicial review over the tax authority. In a High Court application against the Ketua Pengarah Hasil Dalam Negeri (the Director General of Inland Revenue), the questions were whether the Board had acted illegally, irrationally or with procedural impropriety, and whether judicial review was even appropriate where a statutory appeal to the Special Commissioners of Income Tax was available; the substantive dispute concerned a developer's claim to exemption under the Income Tax (Exemption) (No. 19) Order 2007 and whether forfeited deposits, cancellation fees and late-payment charges fell within it. That theme carried to the Federal Court, where — appearing for the respondent taxpayer in an appeal brought by the Director General — the apex court weighed whether the existence of an alternative statutory remedy precluded judicial review, holding that it did not where the decision was tainted with illegality such as double taxation. The third matter moved to constitutional territory, a Federal Court challenge in which Cheong Wen Yie appeared as intervener in proceedings concerning the right to peaceful assembly under Article 10(1)(b) of the Federal Constitution and the requirement in section 9 of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 to give the police ten days' notice of an assembly. The court examined the doctrine of proportionality and whether the notice requirement, and the consequences of non-compliance, were reasonable restrictions consistent with Articles 8(1) and 4(1) of the Constitution. A recurring thread across the two revenue matters is the relationship between judicial review and the statutory appeal route to the Special Commissioners of Income Tax, and the point at which alleged illegality justifies bypassing that route. Taken together, the appearances show a practice built on administrative and revenue law and on constitutional review, characterised by argument about when the supervisory jurisdiction of the courts should be exercised at all, and about how the doctrine of proportionality operates when a statute restricts a constitutional freedom.