The SME Lifecycle: Managing the Tax Points from Beginning to End – a recorded lunchtime online conference

Hear from the experts at this online conference. You can watch it on your computer or on your portable electronic device from anywhere.

The conference will be based on our highly successful video webinar technology: there'll be a chairperson and presentations.

One registration can be shared by colleagues within the same firm utilising the same login.

THE PROGRAM

Session 1: Choosing the Business Structure in an Ever Changing Tax Landscape

In today’s tax world there are so many peculiarities distinct to each business structure option that it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with what tax implications apply to which structure. This session drills into the tax advantages and disadvantages of partnerships, trusts and companies, and is designed to assist in deciding on which structure is fit for purpose. It covers:

• Partnership:

• Treatment of partners’ “salaries” (TR 2005/7)
• Treatment of losses
• When in business with spouse (TR 94/8)

• Trusts:

• Use of a discretionary trust or a fixed/unit trust?
• Treatment of losses
• Family trust election issues
• Section 100A issues
• Use of a bucket company

• Company:

• Options for extracting income
• Division 7A issues
• Will personal services income rules have an impact?
• Eligibility for base rate entity tax rates

Session 2: Structuring to Maximise Active Asset Eligibility for Future Small Business CGT Concessions

Whilst the small business CGT concessions are applied at the time of a CGT event, it can be the structuring and planning in the numerous years prior that can determine the eligibility or effectiveness of those concessions. This session looks at some tips for effective structuring and traps to avoid, including:

• What is an active asset and why is the definition so important?
• The 80% test for shares and interests in trusts:

• How loans between related entities can cause the test to be failed
• Strategies to maximise the possibility of the test being passed

• What tests will a holding company be required to pass for its shares to be considered an active asset?
• Scenarios where use of a business property may or may not satisfy the active asset test
• Structuring depreciable assets to maximise possibility of having CGT concessions apply to them
• Can asset protection strategies impinge on active asset eligibility?
• Case studies

Session 3: Tax Consequences of Winding up the Business

As the saying goes “all good things must come to an end”. This session explores some of the options available to conclude the life cycle of a business with the aim of keeping as much surplus as possible in the hands of the business owners, including:

• Strategies to deal with debit shareholder loans
• What are the tax implications of ultimately paying out funds to shareholders that have benefited from the small business CGT?
• When can a tax effective genuine redundancy payment be an option for the business owner? (TR 2009/2)
• The tax implications regarding the timing of:

• unused long service leave payments
• termination payments

• What are the tax implications of opting to voluntary liquidate a company? (TD 2001/27 TD 95/10)
• How the franking account may be tapped into for tax effective dividend payments from retained profits over numerous years post business
• Case studies