News Updates

As many tenants and landlords turn their attention to their 2020-21 tax returns, one of the big questions is perhaps how they should treat rental concessions provided and received during the last financial year as a result of COVID-19. Tax treatment of these rental concessions depends on a variety of factors and are outlined below.

The Government is continuing to tighten the eligibility rules for claiming tax concessions relating to small business capital gains tax (CGT) obligations.

If you qualify, these concessions can have a big impact on how much of the profit from the sale of a business asset you get to keep, and how much goes to the tax man.

Given the generous nature of the concessions, the ATO is keen to ensure they are used appropriately.

The ATO has announced that it will be conducting a new data-matching program with information from the Department of Home Affairs on passenger movements during the 2016-17 to 2022-23 income years. It will use this data to determine whether business entities and individuals are residents and whether they have met their lodgment and registration obligations.

Many of you have heard of family trusts, but perhaps don’t know too much about their benefits and how they differ from the usual non-fixed trusts. Essentially, a family trust is a trust where the trustee has made a valid family trust election (FTE) for tax purposes. By becoming a family trust, the trust is able to access certain tax concessions which may be beneficial.

Rental property owners beware, the ATO has commenced 2 data-matching programs designed to obtain a myriad of information to ensure that various income tax reporting obligations have been met. Specifically, the ATO will run a new data-matching program to collect property management data for the 2018-19 to 2022-23 financial years, and extend the existing rental bond data-matching program through to 30 June 2023.

Stay up to date with what's happened in Australian markets over the past month.

Our August update video takes you through key economic indicators, as both markets and the economy react to the continued on-again, off-again lockdowns throughout across numerous states in July.
 

With the property market booming despite low wage growth and the after effects of the pandemic, many developers are getting back into the market. If you’re in the business of selling property, you may be able reduce the amount of GST payable on sales of new property by using the margin scheme if certain eligibility requirements are met and a choice is made.

As many of the government’s COVID-19 economic supports coming away, economists predict there’ll be many business failures to follow. If your business is unable to obtain payment from a debtor, depending on the accounting method used by your business, you may be able to claim a tax deduction for the unpaid amount.

The meteoric rise of cryptocurrency (crypto) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) has raised many eyebrows and has now also caught the attention of the ATO. Whether you’re trading crypto or NFTs as an individual or business, capital gains tax (CGT) applies to any gains you make regardless of whether the gain is in foreign currency or Australian dollars.

For many people, the idea of managing and investing your own retirement savings is very appealing.

But there is debate over whether running your own self-managed super fund (SMSF) is cost effective. So, what are the arguments for and against having your own fund?