The Tax Workshop is perfect for sole practitioners and small practices, offering practical, expert-led sessions designed to refresh your knowledge and keep you ahead in the ever-changing tax landscape.

The following topics will be covered in the December session:

Tax Brief

What we cover: Our Tax Brief is a review of the current tax landscape to keep you up-to-date with any changes and current news.

GST and Property Development

A property developer can carry out a one-off project or engage in a series of developments. The property development can be a new build or a renovation. Paying GST for purchases is mandatory; the obligation to collect GST arises if the developer is registered or required to be registered for GST – i.e. the developer is carrying on an enterprise and meets some threshold tests. A property development– whether big or small – takes time. Progress may be slow and it will not always be easy to work out whether the threshold tests have been met. Activity which incurs a GST cost can commence before the first clod of earth is turned and continue after the proceeds from the last sale have been received.

In this session we consider the GST obligations and liabilities of a taxpayer undertaking small-scale property development activities during the property development’s lifecycle:

• Pre-acquisition transactions – when activities are likely to constitute an enterprise for GST purposes, whether a person doing a ‘back yard’ development must register for GST and whether the margin scheme can be used
• Acquisition of the development site – deposits, settlement adjustments and other acquisition costs
• GST treatment of construction and other costs – holding costs, design, planning and approval and off- the-plan
• Sales disposal of the finished property – where there has been a change in intention regarding the property, the purpose of and how the ‘five-year rule’ works, using the margin scheme and the GST withholding rules

Selling a Business

When the owner-operators of a privately owned business decide to sell up and crystallise the gains from what could be a life-time’s work, they will have to decide how best to do this – i.e. sell the shares or units in the business entity or sell the business out of the entity. Whichever path is chosen will attract a wide range of tax consequences. 

Even in a sale of the ownership interests in the entity carrying on the business, the vendor will have to ‘clean-up’ the balance sheet of assets and liabilities which the purchaser is not acquiring. The sale may even involve transferring the business to a cleanskin company. An adviser’s input into structuring the transaction and identifying the likely tax consequences will be critical.

A vendor will seek advice from their adviser (before the transaction) in respect of tax issues such as:

• The key income tax consequences of disposing of business assets from a business entity compared to selling the entity
• When the small business CGT concessions might be available to shareholders who sell the shares to a company
• What to do to ensure that the GST going concern exemption applies to a sale of business
• How GST applies to the sale of a business compared to a sale of ownership interests in the entity that owns the business
• The tax consequences for a vendor who receives a payment under an earnout arrangement. 

In this session, case studies bring together many of the tax and other factors that a vendor of a business needs to consider when selling a business.

All TaxBanter tax training qualifies as eligible CPE/CPD hours.