Our latest insights

GST compliance requirements for schools are wide-ranging and complex. Nevertheless, it is important to remain on top of your GST compliance obligations to avoid the imposition of financial penalties by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) or reputational damage.

The Labor Government has followed through on its election commitment of a multinational tax integrity package to target the tax loopholes used by multinational enterprises (MNEs) and to improve tax transparency, with the release of Treasury’s Discussion Paper on 5 August 2022.

On 1 August 2022, Treasury released draft legislation to prevent the taxation by Australia of Indian resident firms providing certain technical services performed outside Australia to Australian customers.

Yesterday the Australian Capital Territory’s (ACT) Chief Minister Andrew Barr handed down the ACT budget.

The ATO has recently announced that they have now re-commenced issuing requests to release excess contributions and other charges for superannuation fund members who did not make an election on how they would like to treat their excess non-concessional contributions for prior financial years.

Last week the NCAT Appeals Panel released their decision on a recent payroll tax case, Thomas & Naaz, likely to have a significant impact on medical and allied health practices.

On 20 July 2022 the ATO released its Taxpayer Alert TA 2022/2 to remind taxpayers not to undertake “treaty shopping” arrangements in order to reduce Australian withholding tax (WHT) under a Double Tax Agreement (DTA) in relation to a royalty or unfranked dividend payment from Australia.

The Government today introduced draft legislation to give effect to a pre-election promise to exempt (non-luxury) electric cars from fringe benefits tax (FBT). In further good news, hybrid electric cars have now been added to the exemption – we assume due to the extreme wait times for new electric cars at the moment, which would otherwise have significantly dampened the effect of the new law.

In 2022, Australia’s ‘perfect storm’ of low unemployment has required Australian businesses to think differently about how to attract and retain workers

Following on from the ATO’s guide to professional services firms’ allocation of profits in PCG 2021/4, the ATO has now further tightened its compliance scrutiny of individual professionals’ ability to assign or stream income away from themselves to family members by releasing its compliance approach to so-called Everett assignments.

The Western Australian Government has recently handed down its 2022-23 State budget announcing a record $33.9 billion investment in infrastructure over the next four years. The significant investment in infrastructure will not only create a strong pipeline of future economic activity but will shape the way we live and move around the state.

The New South Wales State Government has been busy with tax reform this year – from the raft of state taxation amendments commencing in May, to the first steps to abolish stamp duty introduced as part of their state budget last week.