he Treasury Laws Amendment (Recovering Unpaid Superannuation) Bill 2019 has now been passed and is awaiting royal assent. The SG amnesty provides for a one-off amnesty to encourage employers to self-correct historical SG non-compliance dating from 1 July 1992 to 31 March 2018. An employer will not be able to benefit from the amnesty for SG shortfall relating to the quarter starting on 1 April 2018 or subsequent quarters. It will allow employers to claim tax deductions for payments of SG charge or contributions made during the amnesty period to offset SG charge, as well as remove the administrative component and the Part 7 penalty that may otherwise apply in relation to SG non-compliance. The amnesty period will start from 24 May 2018 and end six months from the date it receives royal assent.

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Australia has been battered by a combination of fire and flooding in the past few months, it is little wonder then the topic insurance payouts are on everyone’s lips. What is perhaps most concerning is that not everyone knows insurance payments may have tax consequences. For example, if you rent out your home or a portion of your home on a short stay website, you may be subject to CGT if you receive an insurance payout in relation to that home. Businesses that receive an insurance payment may be subject to varying tax consequences depending on what the payment is designed to replace. In recent months, parts of Australia have been battered by a combination of fire and floods. As people try to piece their lives together in the aftermath, insurance payouts go a long way in helping rebuild homes and replace lost items. However, you’ll need to beware if you receive an insurance payout in relation to your business, home business or rental property, as there may be tax consequences.

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With the cost of studying at university going up every year, a new combined, renewable student loan limit has been implemented from 1 January 2020 to enable university students borrow more to cover the cost of tuition. For students studying medicine, dentistry, and veterinary science the new loan limit for 2020 is $152,700 and for all other students, the loan limit is $106,319 for 2020. The loans are indexed to increase with CPI every year, and any repayments you make increase your available balance. With the average annual cost of an undergraduate degree for Australian students hovering around the $10,000 mark, a 3-year degree could easily cost upwards of $30,000 depending on what you’re studying and where you’re studying. In the current employment market, rife with short-term employment and contracting whilst at the same time maintaining the requirement for higher qualifications, an average university student could easily end up with a much larger than average debt due to changing courses, units of study, or degrees.

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Today, we have consumer goods and services, both essential and desirable, that our ancestors could only have dreamt of in their lifetime. And yet, some of us are still driven to, or prompted to, purchase even more. This phenomenon can be due, in part, to the consumerism-focused society we live in where we are constantly bombarded by internal and external cues that nudge us to conform to a certain way of life and value system. The maintenance – and improvement – of our wellbeing and happiness is tied to the purchase of consumer goods and services. This can place us on a continuous and dissatisfying ‘consumption spiral/treadmill’. Consumption in itself is not a bad thing, however, reflexive and wasteful consumption can be. For example, we often use consumer goods only until newer or better versions arrive rather than when they physically wear out.

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Increasingly, older people (aged 65 and over) in Australia are choosing to remain living in their own homes for as long as possible. This is being facilitated by access to a combination of formal (paid) care, such as the Commonwealth Home Support Programme and the Home Care Package, as well as informal (unpaid) care. According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are roughly 2.7 million informal carers (primary and non-primary carers) in Australia. Of those, roughly 420,700 are identified as primary carers to older people. Furthermore, in terms of the importance of informal care in the Australian aged care space, the replacement value of all informal care with formal care has been estimated to be roughly $60.3 billion per annum.

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Do you provide car parking to your employees on your business premises? If the parking meets certain conditions you may have to pay fringe benefits tax (FBT) on those and other benefits you provide to your employees. The ATO has commenced a compliance program that looks at employers that use the market value method to calculate the taxable value of car fringe benefits. Specifically, it is looking at employers that have engaged an arm’s length valuer that has produced reports that may not reflect the market value. The ATO has started contacting certain employers that provide car parking fringe benefits to their employees to ensure that all FBT obligations are being met. Generally, car parking fringe benefits arise where the car is: parked on the business premises of the entity providing the benefit; used by the employee to travel between home and their primary place of employment and is parked in the vicinity of that employment; parked for periods totalling more than 4 hours between 7am and 7pm; and a commercial parking station located within 1 km of the premises charges more than the car parking threshold amount.

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Laws limiting foreign residents’ ability to claim the CGT main residence exemption are now in place. This means that if you’re a foreign resident at the time of disposal of the property that was your main residence, you may not be entitled to an exemption and may be liable for tens of thousands in capital gains tax. Some limited exemptions apply for “life events” as well as property purchased before 7:30pm (AEST) 9 May 2017 and disposed of before 30 June 2020.

Foreign residents beware, laws have been passed to restrict your access to claim the CGT main residence exemption on the sale of your home, except in some limited circumstances. This applies to any person that is not an Australian resident for tax purposes at the time of disposal (ie when the contract is signed to sell the property).

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The new year means more help for first home buyers to get on the property ladder. The new First Home Loan Deposit Scheme came into effect on 1 January 2020 and seeks to provide eligible first home buyers on low and middle incomes with a guarantee so they can purchase a residential property with a deposit of as little as 5%. Currently, only 7,000 places are available with 3,000 having already been taken up, but 10,000 more places will be released in July. Eligibility depends on the financial circumstances of the applicants as well as the property value.With the advent of the new year as well as a new decade, a new measure is now in effect to give first home buyers a leg up on the property market. Starting 1 January 2020, couples that earn less than $200,000 combined, and singles that earn less than $125,000, who have never owned a property and are Australian citizens may apply for the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme (FHLDS). Australian permanent residents will not be eligible, and if you’re applying as a couple, both will need to be Australian citizens.

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Running a business and ensuring your employees are paid the correct super can be difficult and inadvertent mistakes can be made from time to time. Previously, a mistake may not be picked up for years after it occurs, but with the advent of single touch payroll, the ATO now has more data than ever to ensure that the correct super guarantee payments are made and impose penalties where the payments are not correct. So, if you make a mistake, what are the conditions that you have to satisfy to obtain a remission of the additional super guarantee charge penalty?

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