"Section 264 confers on the Commissioner a power whose exercise will be likely adversely to affect rights of individuals. This is a reason for inclining in favour of the view that it must be exercised personally. On the other hand, that section, and a number of other sections of the Act, confer on the Commissioner powers which may be expected to be exercised in myriads of cases. Those other sections include ss 166-169, 170 and 174, which give power to make and amend assessments and to serve notice of assessments. Since there are literally millions of taxpayers (according to Year Book Australia 1982 at 577, there were over 5.6 million individual taxpayers in the year 1979-80) it would reduce the administration of the taxation laws to chaos if the powers conferred by those sections could be exercised only by the Commissioner or a Deputy Commissioner personally. It can not be supposed that the Parliament intended such a result. By s 13 of the Act any reference in the Act to the Commissioner is deemed to include, in respect of matters as to which a Deputy Commissioner has exercised any power or function conferred upon him by delegation, a reference to that Deputy Commissioner. The power of delegation conferred by s 8(1) of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 (Cth), as amended, enables the Commissioner to make a delegation 'to a Deputy Commissioner of Taxation or other person'. In Re Reference Under Ombudsman Act, s 11[10], Brennan J said that 'The practical administrative necessity which warrants an authority's exercising his power by the acts of another disappears when the authority is empowered to delegate all of his powers and functions to that other.' The existence of a power to delegate is of course an important consideration in deciding whether the designated authority may act through an authorized agent. However, the fact that the Act itself contemplates that the delegation will be to a Deputy Commissioner only (notwithstanding that s 8(1) of the Taxation Administration Act confers a wider power of delegation) suggests that it was not intended that there should be a wholesale delegation of powers to comparatively minor officials. But in any case it would hardly be practicable to make a delegation of that kind, and it seems to me that there exists, as the Parliament must have known, a practical necessity that the powers conferred on the Commissioner by the Act should be exercised by the officers of his Department who were acting as his authorized agents. On the whole I have reached the conclusion that the powers conferred by s 264 were not intended to be exercised only by the Commissioner or his delegate personally but may be exercised through a properly authorized officer. This is consistent with the decision in Lee v Federal Commissioner of Taxation[11], where it was held that the acts of the Commissioner's officers (no doubt acting within the course of their authority) in performing duties under other sections of the Act were the acts of the Commissioner for the purposes of the Act. In opposition to this view reliance was placed on the fact that express reference to officers authorized by the Commissioner is made in ss 263 and 264, and this, it was said, indicated an intention to exclude action by authorized officers in other cases. Section 263, which refers to 'the Commissioner or any officer authorized by him', is concerned with rights, whereas s 264 is concerned with powers; one may conclude that a power may be exercised through an agent more readily than that a right is conferred upon an agent. The reference in s 264(1)(b) to 'any officer authorized by him' may be explained by the fact that in the context of that provision it is necessary to specify the officer before whom the recipient of the notice is required to attend. The fact that authorization is expressly mentioned in these provisions does not assist the conclusion that s 264 otherwise excluded any possibility of authorization."