Wisewould Mahony | Business & Commercial Insights – Volume 5
Wisewould Mahony offers a full suite of legal services covering business, commercial, corporate, M&A, private equity capital raising, financial services, tax, asset protection, estate planning, IT, IP, property, employment, and related areas, with lawyers in Melbourne and Geelong. The following is a brief outline of some of the issues arising out of recent client work that may also affect you, your businesses or family:
Exemptions to the vacant residential land tax – an update for holiday homeowners
On 14 May 2024 further details were provided about changes to the Vacant Residential Land Tax (VRLT). We provided an overview of how the reforms could impact holiday homeowners in our article here.
Since our previous update, the Victorian Government have released details of wider exemptions for holiday home held by discretionary trusts, unit trusts and companies. Our overview on the changes can be found here.
Introduction of legislation to add an extra 15% tax on superannuation balances over $3 million
As part of the announced 2023-24 budget measures, the Federal Government has introduced legislation into Parliament to insert a new Division 296 into the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 with the purpose of adding an extra 15 percent tax on the earnings of superannuation balances over $3 million. This measure, if enacted, is due to commence on 1 July 2025.
This measure is considered controversial, not because it imposes an additional tax burden on high superannuation account balance holders, but because it proposes to tax unrealised capital gains as the Division 296 tax will be a tax based on the account holder’s total superannuation balance, rather than a tax on the earnings from that superannuation account. Our full article can be found here.
Reminder to ensure that trust deeds are regularly reviewed
It is important that trust deeds are regularly reviewed, to ensure that the provisions are appropriate for your or your client’s circumstances. We recommend that trust deeds are reviewed every five years to ensure their currency in light of any changes to your circumstances and to the law. A summary of the key elements to ensure are in place can be found here.
Australian Trade Mark Picklist Updated
In March 2024 IP Australia abandoned its existing ‘picklist’ of approved goods and services descriptions which could be used in low-cost Australian trade mark applications, replacing it with the Madrid Goods and Services List.
This change has few apparent benefits for new applicants for Australian trade mark registration who have no foreseeable need to protect internationally. New applicants will now need to spend longer identifying and claiming the specific goods and services they do or will supply under the mark, which may lead to an increase in conflict refusals in the short term. Our full article can be found here.
Asset protection
Consideration of asset protection strategies is an important part of your business and personal structuring and planning. It is impossible to accurately identify when a business may face trouble, and in most cases we have seen the issues have been entirely out of our clients’ control. Fortunately, there are many ways to structure both your business and personal assets to minimise the effects of one person or entity’s insolvency. Our full article can be found here.
Removing a PPSR Registration held by a Deregistered Company
Ensuring that outdated PPSR security registrations are removed or updated is important to avoiding future complications or delays to your business. The process for having an outdated PPSR security registration removed can become protracted and costly where the secured party holding the registration no longer exists.
As such, it is prudent for businesses to regularly undertake a search of the PPSR so as to identify any outdated registrations which a secured party has failed to deregister upon the relevant security no longer being valid, and then promptly proceed to submit the required documents to that secured party in order to have the PPSR registration removed.
Read more here.
If any of these matters raise issues you would like to discuss, please give us a call on (03) 9629 8333, or email any of our lawyers or enquiries@wisemah.com.au.
