Our latest insights

The establishment of the National Bushfire Recovery Agency has been announced, together with an initial $2 billion allocation to the National Bushfire Recovery Fund that will support all recovery efforts across Australia over the next 2 years.

Summary of 2008-2019 Local technical and financial reporting alerts

2019 has been an interesting and challenging year for businesses, both large and small. As well as grappling with a weakening economy and an unsettled global trading environment, one consistent theme that stands out in Australia is an increased focus on employment tax compliance, with a raft of law changes, audit activity and landmark cases.

Started in 1968, Special Olympics is a world-wide movement and the largest sporting organisation for people with intellectual disabilities.

All organisations are grappling with the myriad of employee agreements and obligations that result in a wide variety of payments to their people.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) recently published its plans to significantly scale up its efforts to raise the standards of governance, culture, remuneration and accountability (GCRA) across financial institutions.

Corporate governance has been a hot topic of discussion in Australia for many years – spearheaded by Royal Commissions, drilled home by corporate law changes to charge company directors with more responsibilities, and demanded by consumers and shareholders holding companies to a higher standard of behaviour and transparency.

We recently hosted a number of clients in our Melbourne office, where we assembled a panel of experts to unpack some of the challenges of workforce planning in the retail sector.

In a world where a company’s tax payments (or lack thereof) are under increasing scrutiny, both the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the Australian Accounting Standard Board are now enforcing new reporting obligations that will see companies disclose their “uncertain” tax positions in their annual tax returns and financial statements.

Legislation seeking to deny a deduction for the costs of holding Vacant Land (Treasury Laws Amendment Bill 2019) has been amended by the Senate and subsequently approved by the House of Representatives on 22 October 2019.

Just over three years old, Verrency provides innovation as a service in the payment space. This exciting fintech allows banks and financial providers to deliver a truly personalised and seamless experience to customers.

We have seen many examples of taxpayers incorrectly claiming exemptions or unaware that their innocuous discretionary trust or testamentary trust is a “foreign person”. Land tax exemptions are based on self-assessment and many people and companies will believe they have self-assessed appropriately, but the exemptions can be complex and confusing, and they may not technically qualify.