Our latest insights

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).

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

There is a lot of noise around the property sector at the moment – and it’s not all positive. Prices are down – but this shouldn’t be a surprise when some markets (namely Sydney & Melbourne) saw unprecedented hikes in recent years.

There is a lot of noise in the property sector at the moment – prices are down, financing hurdles are higher and tax policies impacting property could change.

From 1 January 2019, Queensland’s building industry participants are again required to lodge their annual audited accounts with the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC), demonstrating compliance with the QBCC’s Minimum Financial Requirements in order to maintain their building licence.

Every year we spend time interviewing our clients and industry contacts to better understand their business environment and the trends most impacting them.

Foreign investors have been an easy target for politicians of late. It makes sense – they don’t get a vote and they don’t have a collective voice to defend themselves.

After much focus in last year’s Federal Budget, the real estate and construction sector still needs time to implement the raft of changes and assess the incentives under the Housing Affordability banner in 2017, as well as the more recent stapled securities announcements.

Trustees of discretionary trusts could be contravening the Foreign Investment Review Board’s (FIRB) rules when purchasing Australian property.

Across the world, tenants have increasing expectations of intelligent buildings, providing them access to technology and automated systems, from online storage to health and safety, communications, climate control, lighting, security and more.

Too often the earlier adopters of technology that incorporate new sustainable materials and/or construction practices in their projects, have found it difficult to access funding due to the perceived higher risk of not applying a ‘mainstream’ approach.