05th Mar, 2018
As part of the 2017–2018 Budget, the Federal Government announced a range of reforms intended to reduce pressure on housing affordability.
Legislation has now been introduced into Parliament that proposes to:
The Bill also proposes to amend the tax law to provide an additional discount on CGT for affordable housing. The discount of up to 10% will apply if a CGT event happens to an ownership interest in residential property used to provide affordable housing.
05th Mar, 2018
Treasury has released draft legislation to make sure that taxpayers will only be able to access the small business CGT concessions for assets that are used (or held ready for use) in the course of a small business or are an interest in a small business.
The Government accepted a number of the taskforce’s recommendations, and has now introduced a Bill into Parliament, proposing to combat the black economy by:
05th Mar, 2018
The ATO has provided an update on its latest focus areas and the compliance projects it is undertaking to reduce corporate tax avoidance. These include:
05th Mar, 2018
The Department of Social Services (DSS) has released its proposed means testing rules for pooled lifetime retirement income streams.
The pension standards were amended from 1 July 2017 to allow for more tax-exempt lifetime superannuation income stream products that enable pooling risk to manage longevity risk. Lifetime pensions and annuities that meet these new standards qualify for tax concessions tax treatment.
The draft also proposes additional conditions to be satisfied from 1 July 2017 when applying the small business CGT concession for capital gains related to a share in a company or an interest in a trust.
05th Mar, 2018
A Bill has been introduced into Parliament that, when passed, will require purchasers of new residential premises and new subdivisions of potential residential land to pay the goods and services tax (GST) on the purchase directly to the ATO as part of the settlement process from 1 July 2018.
The new measure was announced in the 2017–2018 Federal Budget. It is intended to speed up the GST payment process, and to deal with the problem of some developers dissolving their business and setting up a new entity to avoid paying GST (a form of “phoenix” tax avoidance).
05th Mar, 2018
The Black Economy Taskforce was established in 2017 “to develop an innovative, forward-looking whole-of-government policy response to combat the black economy in Australia, recognising that these issues cannot be tackled by traditional tax enforcement measures alone”. In May 2017 the taskforce made a its initial recommendations, which it based on foreign jurisdiction experiences, consultation with stakeholders and anecdotal evidence it had received.
The DSS proposes to consider the following amounts when assessing such pooled lifetime income streams as part of social security means testing: