Our latest insights

Charities around Australia are highly reliant on donations and bequeaths to keep their programs running – with a significant proportion of their funding coming from trusts.

Australian tax incentive assisting Early Stage Innovation Companies (ESICs) attract funding

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The new rules will apply to individuals, trusts (which are not widely held) and to self-managed super funds (SMSF’s).

Treasurer Ben Wyatt delivered the Western Australian State Budget on 9 October 2020, the first of the State and Territory budgets of 2020.

Are you a property developer who has built new residential property to sell, but instead have had to lease them due to market conditions?

Financial reporting thresholds for ‘large’ proprietary companies have been doubled following a recent Australian legislative change which is effective for financial years commencing on or after 1 July 2019.