On 4 June 2024 the Federal Court of Australia handed down the decision of Fair Work Ombudsman v 85 Degrees Coffee Australia Pty Ltd [2024] FCA. This decision resulted in the Fair Work Ombudsman penalising the Australian franchisor of the 85 Degrees brand $1.44 million for its “systemic failure to ensure compliance within its franchise network” which included underpayments at several of their Sydney franchisee outlets.

In a case run by Sladen Legal, Merristock Pty Ltd v Commissioner of State Revenue (Review and Regulation) [2024] VCAT 535, the taxpayer has successfully appealed against a Victorian State Revenue Office (SRO) determination that land owned by the taxpayer was not eligible for the primary production land tax exemption.

The High Court has dismissed an appeal by Godolphin Australia Pty Ltd (Godolphin) and confirmed that it cannot claim the primary production land tax exemption, as it was unable to show that the “dominant use” of its properties was for primary production where it also had substantial horseracing activities.  The decision illustrates the issues that can arise when primary production land is used as part of business models that include other interrelated activities.

In a major backdown, the Victorian State Government has agreed to reduce some of the impact of the recent policy shifts towards taxing general practitioners as employees for payroll tax purposes.

The recent case of Lau v Moorilla Estate Pty Ltd [2024] TASCAT 58 revolved around a conflict between an artwork, specifically designed to be discriminatory for artistic purposes, and the provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 (Tas) (the Act).

In the current economic landscape, business owners may be considering a restructure, merger, or demerger to adapt, survive, or enable growth. A change in the structure of a business typically involves either the transfer of ownership interests in the entire business or of specific assets of the business.

1. The High Court has described the trust as a “…creature of equity…” subject to the jurisdiction of a court of equity. The essential feature of every trust is that one person is an owner of property, but is bound to use their position as owner for the benefit of another or for the advancement of a purpose.

If you are selling an asset to a trust, don’t forget about CGT event E2…

The new Commercial and Industrial Property Tax reform that progressively abolishes stamp duty on commercial and industrial property from 1 July 2024 is one of the most significant Victorian property tax reforms in the past 30 years.  Anyone looking to buy or sell commercial or industrial property will be impacted.

On 14 May 2024, the State Taxation Amendment Bill 2024 (Vic) (the Bill) was released after having its second reading speech in the Victorian Legislative Assembly.

The Government has released its response to the Franchising Independent Review agreeing to the majority of the recommendations. This article identifies some key changes to be made, the timing for these and explores what this may mean for franchises.

In the decision of S&H Investments Pty Ltd and Commissioner of Taxation [2024] AATA 893, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), the Tribunal affirmed the decision of the Commissioner of Taxation to assess the taxpayer for the superannuation guarantee charge for failing to pay superannuation for their employee/contractor referred to as “TW”.

On 7 May 2024, the Victorian State Government presented the Victorian State Budget for 2024/25.

No substantial tax measures were announced.  There were only new State Tax measures in the Victorian State Budget 2024-25 which are listed within this article.

Sladen Legal is delighted to have been identified by clients and peers for expertise and abilities in the 2024 listing of recommended Victorian Property & Real Estate Law Firms - Victoria, 2024

As noted previously, the recent Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) decision of BPFN and Commissioner of Taxation (Taxation) [2023] AATA 2330 (28 July 2023) (BPFN) had struck a blow to the ATO’s strict approach to non-arm’s length income (NALI) and taken a more general commercial approach to NALI.

Drafting is an art form which requires precision, practice and preferably access to a large bank of precedents to assist in tailoring what is required to the circumstances and by the parties the subject of an agreement.

Challenges to death benefits and binding death benefit nominations (BDBNs) have been regularly popping up in court decisions for last couple of decades.

This paper has been built on a previous paper on the superannuation guarantee (SG) regime, titled Super Guarantee – no longer the toothless tiger. That paper was designed to take a holistic examination of the SG regime. In this paper, we have built on that approach and added a number of developments, including:

As soon as the business or investment structure involves entities such as companies, it is inevitable that there will be intra-group loans arising from either: