The soft drinks bottler, Coca-Cola Amatil, is facing a A$50m (US$30.2m) tax bill from the Australian Taxation Office, following a reassessment of the demerger of its European arm in 1998.

The additional claim is in regard to a capital gain which the ATO believes one of the bottler’s offshore subsidiaries made from the transaction. However, Amatil believes that, having taken legal, tax and accounting advice at the time of the demerger, the assessment of its tax obligations at the time was correct.