If your client is a contractor or consultant then you need to be aware of what is called the PSI rules (Personal Services Income rules). These rules are designed to ensure that if your client operates through a partnership, company, trust or other structure and the income derived from that entity relates to the personal [...]
Monthly article archives: May 2011
Tax Audits and Penalties
The Offshore Voluntary Disclosure initiative closed on 30 June 2010. While you are no longer able to take advantage of this intiative, you can still make a voluntary disclosure of your offshore income by providing details to allow the ATO to amend your income tax returns. The ATO has indicated that they will be increasing [...]
Trust resolutions – impact of proposed changes
The Australian Government has released draft legislation to enable the streaming of capital gains and franked distributions enable changes to ensure that low-tax entities, especially exempt entities, cannot be used inappropriately to reduce the tax payable on the taxable income of a trust allow trust beneficiaries to continue to use the primary production averaging and [...]
R&D Concession – Are you Missing Out ?
In small business, you often need to innovate to survive. Despite this, the level of research and development (R&D) claims by the small business community is minuscule. While small business employs about half of the workforce, it only represents just over 10% of all R&D claimed. But many SMEs complete research and development work in [...]
Salary Packaging
The reduction in marginal tax rates and the increase in the threshold for the top marginal tax rate in recent years have impacted on the benefits of salary sacrificing certain items. However, salary packaging can still be tax effective for employees and can be a relatively simple way for employers to help attract and retain [...]