The Federal Treasurer handed down his sixth Budget last night. The Budget was framed in the context of a $19.4b deficit for 2012/2013 (as against an originally projected $1.5b surplus) and a Federal election to be held in September. The Budget is designed to support the big ticket reform items of the Rudd/Gillard years being the completion of the N...

On Friday 5 April the Government announced the long awaited superannuation reforms which have been subject to much speculation leading up to the Federal Budget in May. Broadly, the reforms are aiming to remove the concessions available to taxpayers with significant superannuation balances. Together with the change announced in last year’s Federal B...

“True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense”, declared Emanuel Swedenborg. Luckily, it does not have to be that way. There is a way to have your cake and eat it too, or at least get a tax deduction for it

The ATO recently released, for the first time, an overview of its approach to assessing the tax compliance risk profile of small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and wealthy individuals. The ATO defines these as follows:

Legislation passed on 29 June 2012 extended the director penalty regime to:

From 1 July 2012 businesses in the building and construction industry are required to report to the ATO the total payments they make to contractors for building and construction services.

The Government recently released its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (‘MYEFO’), which contained a number of revenue saving measures.

The timing of investment in your business is likely to have significant tax consequences depending on the nature of the investment. As previously advised, substantial tax concessions will be available from 1 July 2012:

Issues to Consider Prior to 30 June 2012

The rapid growth of contractors in Australia has prompted the ATO to review those arrangements where the ATO believes there may be a risk of employees being incorrectly treated as contractors. The ATO is concerned that some employers might be incorrectly classifying their employees as contractors in order to avoid having to pay PAYG Withholding, wo...