Colonial motor co ltd v CIR Colonial motors had a 60 yr old building, done on courtney place. Used to be used as a motor assembly plant. They had to do earthquake seismic strengthening work on the building and do some significant refurbishment. They had to do this to comply with earthquake safety requirements. They did some refurbishment, quite significant. They converted 8 story warehouse into a 9 story office block. It is a significant amount of change. The value itself is not important but to give you an idea of the extent of the change - they changed that warehouse that was valued at $1.6 m with an office building of $16.5 m. Colonial motors tried to argue there was a component of refurbishment going on here. They said Repairs and maintenance component of project should be separate to the earthquake strengthening part. In this case, this was capital. Clearly capital expenditure as it was all part of one large project. Wasnt reasonable to carve out a component and say a component that was a refurnishment therefore repairs of maintenance. Actually this transformation was a complete transformation. It was one project and therefore all of this was capital expenditure. They said, this applies to the next case as well. shorten