The Full Federal Court in FCT v Healius [2020] FCAFC 173 has upheld the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO) appeal of the Federal Court decision in Healius v COT [2019] FCA 2011 which considered whether lump sum payments made by a medical centre to its doctors were assessable on revenue or capital account.

The trustee of a discretionary trust may benefit those who fall under the definition of “beneficiaries” in the trust’s deed. Sometimes, the scope of that definition is unclear.

Many business owners may be considering a restructure, merger, or demerger in the current economic environment to adapt, sustain, or promote growth in these tumultuous times. A change in a corporate structure typically entails either the change of ownership interests in the entire business or the transfer of specific assets of the business.

Many business owners may be considering a restructure, merger, or demerger in the current economic environment to adapt, sustain, or promote growth in these tumultuous times.

Where super guarantee contributions are not made by 28 days after the relevant quarter, a superannuation guarantee charge (SGC) liability is triggered. If the contributions are made after the due date, then, in certain circumstances, those late contributions can be offset against the SGC liability.

From 1 July 2014, the ATO was granted power to issue administrative penalties to self managed superannuation fund SMSF) trustees for breaches of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 (SIS Act).

In advancing their continued attention toward the taxation of cryptocurrencies, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has published a reminder for taxpayers to ensure they are working out capital gains and losses correctly;

While the application of land transfer (stamp) duty is reasonably straight forward for land transfers such as a purchase of property under a contract of sale, the application of duty in relation to declarations of trust can be complicated.

Event Based Reporting Obligations for the transfer balance cap using TBAR

1. Succession planning – recent cases on BDBNs

SMSF Update – Your Ultimate 2020 Review and Forecast Slide Overview

A common question we receive is whether, and what sort of, a valuation is required to calculate land transfer duty for related party property dealings.

Advising clients on business structuring requires the consideration, and assessment, of the factors that should be considered when a client is about to commence the operation of a business.

The headlines focus on personal tax cuts, the deficit, and the increase in debt. However, this year’s Budget is a mixture of tax measures – business and personal - to boost spending, create jobs, and help the economy grow out of the COVID-19 induced recession.

Over the last 18 months several decisions of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Federal and Full Federal Courts considered the application of Australian tax residency laws including Harding v FCT [2019] FCAFC 29, FCT v Addy [2020] FCAFC 135, Stockton v FCT [2019] FCA 1679, Handsley v FCT [2019] AATA 917 and Coelho v FCT [2020] AATA 2474.

This article looks at the scope of the definition of the term “beneficiary” in a discretionary trust deed, and, in particular, examines the ambiguities that sometimes arise in relation to the terms “spouse” and “child” within that definition

An employment agency contract involves a contract between two parties where one of the parties (the employment agent) procures the services of a person for a client. The relevant test is whether the employment agent provided individuals who would comprise, or who would be added to, the workforce of the client for the conduct of the client's business.

After 6 months of, and multiple revisions to the administration to, JobKeeper, the extension to the scheme – labelled JobKeeper 2.0, begins today. JobKeeper 2.0 runs until 28 March 2021. In this article we summarise the main elements and qualification requirements of JobKeeper 2.0.

The ATO has provided some welcome clarification for auditors regarding their obligations to report on non-arm’s length expenditure (NALE) incurred by a super fund of a general nature.

In our earlier articles we discussed the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and Federal Court decisions in Eichmann v FCT [2019] AATA 162 and FCT v Eichmann [2019] FCA 2155. The Full Federal Court in Eichmann v FCT [2020] FCAFC 155 recently allowed the taxpayer’s appeal of the Federal Court decision.

State and territory revenue offices made land tax and payroll tax measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We outlined a summary of the measures as at 1 September 2020 here.