Our latest insights

As we come to the end of the financial year, its timely to review your upcoming tax compliance obligations. For multinational entities, the disclosures and complexities of tax compliance generally have never been more complex or challenging. Here are some of the main IDS issues to be aware of.

The ATO released its June 2022 final Legal Professional Privilege (LPP) Protocol setting out the ATO's recommended approach for taxpayers to identify LPP communications and making LPP claims to the ATO in response to a formal notice to produce documents.

This financial year was a year of many changes in the R&D space – a new government, borders re-opening Australia to the world, easing supply chain pressures driving opportunities for trade, and an appetite to boost on-shore manufacturing.

At a high level, the Property Tax is intended to replace stamp duty as the method of taxing land in NSW. Stamp duty is a large tax paid upfront once on the purchase of land in NSW, while the proposed Property Tax is a much smaller annual tax, similar to council rates.

Many people are getting excited about the Government’s pre-election promise to exempt electric cars from Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) as of 1 July 2022. But before you rush to order your new vehicle, there are a few considerations for you to take into account. While this measure is expected to take effect shortly, there is no legislation for this yet – not even in draft – and parliament’s next sitting days have not been announced. This means any new legislation will no doubt need to be retrospective to have effect from 1 July 2022.

Professional service firms have experienced growth and increased profitability over the last two years. The issue of succession – promoting, attracting and managing the retirement of equity participants – has never been more challenging.

As the financial year draws to a close, now is the time for property developers to review their projects and determine whether there has been a change of intended or actual use of any residential premises which may require a GST adjustment under Division 129 of the GST Act.

The ATO has recently issued a new class ruling expanding on what products qualify as a ‘portable electronic device’ for FBT exemption purposes. In addition to devices that were designed to operate as a small, portable complete unit without an external power supply such as laptops, mobile phones and similar devices, the new ruling extends to include portable display monitors that run in connection with phones, tablets, etc. Espresso Displays were an instrumental part of the process, having obtained the ruling for their portable screens.

AusTrade announced the opening of the next round of the 2023 Export Market Development Grant (EMDG) program. Applications are proposed to open for 5 weeks, from 31 May to 5 July 2022. The EMDG program is the Federal Government’s cornerstone funding program encouraging Australian businesses to seek export opportunities for their goods, services, intellectual property and software. The program allows businesses to access grants over an 8 year period, or up to a total funding amount of $770,000. The reform model is available to businesses with a turnover of less than $20m as at 30 June 2022.

In the past few years, we’ve seen increased focus from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) encouraging organisations to be transparent, demonstrate good corporate governance and have strong tax risk management frameworks in place. The ATO is now focusing on the tax governance of high-net-wealth privately owned groups – as part of their Top 500 and Next 5,000 programs.

On 28 March, the ATO sent its strongest message on debt enforcement since the COVID-19 pandemic commenced, advising that it is now issuing letters to taxpayers informing them about their potential personal liability for company tax debts under the Director Penalty Notice (DPN) programme.

The Queensland Government has today announced that the implementation of phases 3 and 4 of the Project Trust Account framework will be delayed by 9 months.