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51st Victorian State Convention

Published on 11 Oct 2012 | Took place at Mantra, Lorne, VIC

    This year’s convention was about focusing on the practical issues. The presenters rolled up their sleeves and dealt with the real-life issues that practitioners at the coalface, and their clients, encounter on a daily basis. Whether it was a session on dealing with the ATO, a session on considering the latest corporate tax changes or a session on a difficult SME tax issue, the practical aspects were discussed.
    Sessions included:
  • Superannuation — Pensions and Death
  • Capital management strategies including Corporations Act Reforms and recent case Developments
  • Valuations
  • Company Losses – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
  • Getting Money Out of SME Companies
  • Reportable Tax Positions
  • Succession Planning for Professionals
  • The New Part IVA – Clarification or Extension?
  • Dispute Resolution
  • Transfer Pricing
  • Contractor vs Employee
  • Family Law and Family Trusts
  • GST and State Taxes Update
  • Division 7A: Hotspots with Common Structures and Strategies.

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Individual sessions

Superannuation - Pensions and death

Author(s):  Thalia KALABOUKAS

Recent changes in superannuation law have simplified some superannuation pension rules, but most of the big questions remain. This paper helps advisers identify the best pension structure for clients having regard to both taxation and estate planning considerations.

Issues covered include:

  • When should clients think about pensions – age 55, resignation, retirement or other?
  • Comparing and contrasting pension options
  • When can you commute a pension?
  • Re-contribution and other strategies you need to tell your clients about
  • Should you always segregate assets?
  • Reversionary pensions and binding death nominations – which one wins?
Materials from this session:

Tax and value: An oxymoron?

Author(s):  Michael CHURCHILL

Taxpayers and their advisers face significant challenges in navigating the case law, international standards, established practice and capital markets in establishing “market value” for a plethora of purposes.

This paper looks at “market value” in different tax and revenue contexts, including:

  • small business CGT concessions
  • Division 7A
  • assessment of TARP
  • CGT issues
  • share buybacks
  • value shifting
  • tax consolidations.
Materials from this session:

Tax distributions in practice

Author(s):  Graeme WHITE

The introduction of trust streaming changes has caused many practitioners to panic about ensuring clients’ trustee distributions are correctly in place by 30 June each year. In this paper, Graeme spells out what is needed to methodically address each client’s circumstances by 30 June to ensure your trustee client, and you, are safe from ATO scrutiny.

The issues covered include:

  • Where do you start and where do you go to find the information?
  • Practical recognition and treatment of the basic terms of distributable income, s95(1) income, income equalisation and income recharacterisation clauses, including TR 2012/D1 interpretation
  • Use of proportions, fractions or percentages rather than dollar amounts
  • What types of income can be streamed and how?
  • How to handle distributions through a chain of trusts
  • What happens if the ATO amends?
  • Use of resolution decision checklists and decision trees
  • Determining the eventual journal entries, general ledgers and accounts.
Materials from this session:

Consolidation - We have the new law! What does it mean?

Author(s):  Richard CZERWIK

Ten years into the consolidation regime, the tax cost setting rules have changed with retrospective effect. There are also changes to the TOFA stages 3 and 4 interaction rules. This paper concentrates on issues of vital importance to corporate taxpayers and their advisers, and covers:

  • practical issues in dealing with retrospective amendments
  • what is left to claim: contracts, intangibles and consumables
  • the business acquisition model and future acquisitions
  • the TOFA–consolidation interfact
  • the impacts for SMEs
  • the Board of Taxation’s post-implementation review.
Materials from this session:

Getting money out of SME companies

Author(s):  Tony RIORDAN

When the revenue tail starts to wag the commercial dog, strange outcomes and potential dangers are inevitable. This paper looks at some of the issues to be addressed for SME clients who want to extract money from their companies without being bitten.

Issues covered include:

  • debit loans (Div 7A)
  • credit loans (Div 974 debt–equity)
  • making UPEs and how to get the money out
  • share buybacks
  • capital reductions
  • dividends (including streaming and classes of shares)
  • excessive remuneration and s109
  • sections 45A and 45B
  • demergers
  • liquidations.
Materials from this session:

Succession planning for professionals

Author(s):  Mark NORTHEAST

To ensure a professional practice thrives and successfully continues into the future, succession planning is critical. This paper looks at recent developments and income tax issues associated with:

  • admissions – without new equity admissions, the practice dies
  • exits – issues surrounding an equity holder’s exit/retirement
  • selling the business – what are the income tax issues involved in selling equity/business?
  • key issues in merging two practices.

These are looked at in terms of the common structures for both “goodwill” and “no-goodwill” practices.

Materials from this session:

Division 7A: Hotspots with common structures and strategies

Author(s):  Paul HOCKRIDGE

With the ATO blowtorch squarely aimed at Div 7A, this paper turns the heat up on Div 7A issues arising from common structures and strategies post
16 December 2009, together with possible ways of dealing with them.

Issues to be examined include:

  • multi-layered entities, creating multiple Div 7A problems 
  • loans and payments through interposed entities
  • strategies to deal with UPEs, including transferring receivables
  • UPEs becoming loans because of the trust deed
  • non-resident companies and/or shareholders
  • the use of property – when and how to value it?
  • the use of guarantees, security and subrogating rights to UPEs.
Materials from this session:

GST and Victorian state taxes update

Author(s):  Melanie BAKER

One of the most fundamental concepts of the GST regime is taxable supply. This paper focuses on who supplies what, to whom and when, covering:

  • recent cases
  • analysing tripartite arrangements
  • involuntary supplies
  • timing rules
  • land rich duty provisions.
Materials from this session:

Resolving tax disputes

Author(s):  Michael Bearman

Most tax advisers think that any dispute with the ATO begins and ends with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. However, most tax advisers may be surprised to learn that there is a wide range of administrative remedies where a solution can be found without resorting to litigation.

This paper sets out the latest strategies in dealing with the ATO in a dispute including:

  • Retention of refunds and assessments:
    • pre-assessment reviews
    • dealing with debt recovery by the ATO
    • making the most of the objections process
    • using alternative dispute resolution
    • using the AAT to resolve disputes effectively
    • when to appeal to the Federal Court.
  • Claims for compensation from the ATO:
    • negligence and other torts
    • CDDA Scheme.
Materials from this session:

Transfer pricing: The ATO perspective

Author(s):  Michael JENKINS

Recent case law and legislation in response have changed the landscape on transfer pricing matters for good. This paper provides you with an up-to-date review from the ATO's perspective, of this growing area of advice and enable you to tackle the current and future transfer pricing issues.

Materials from this session:

Family trusts and the family court

Author(s):  Geoffrey DICKSON

Recent cases have highlighted how family trusts can be caught up in volatile family law disputes. Advisers need to understand what they should tell clients about these risks and whether any risks can be minimised.

In this paper you will learn about:

  • What the Family Law Act says about family trusts
  • The Family Court’s view of family trusts
  • How family trusts can be attacked
  • Can a family trust be protected?
Materials from this session:

Company losses: The good, the bad and the ugly

Author(s):  Gary CHRISTIE,  Michelle NORTHEAST

The government has announced its intention to reform the tax loss provisions. This paper examines the difficulties of using the current provisions, the proposed reforms and examine areas where further reforms are required.

The paper covers:

  • loss carry backs
  • changes to continuity of ownership and same business tests
  • what should we do with the integrity rules?
  • announced but yet un-enacted measures – Div 167
  • the not-so-hidden costs of the proposed reforms.
Materials from this session:

The new Part IVA - Clarification or extension?

Author(s):  Simon STEWARD

Following several recent decisions of the Federal Court in favour of the taxpayer on the question of whether a “tax benefit” arose, the government has announced its intention to amend Part IVA to ensure that Part IVA continues to be effective in countering tax avoidance. This presentation critically evaluate the proposals and covers:

  • what do they really mean?
  • are they needed?
  • a review of the recent casest
  • tax planning implicationh
  • sow would some of the key Part IVA cases have been decided if the proposed changes applied then?
Materials from this session:

Cases review

Author(s):  Jerome TSE

This paper provides a practical analysis of the most important Australian tax cases handed down over the past 12 months. The cases are relevant to all in the tax industry regardless of their size, industry or speciality. In addition to analysing the decisions themselves, consideration is given to judicial trends emerging in tax matters.

Materials from this session:

The new transfer pricing rule

Author(s):  Michael SELTH

Recent case law and legislation in response have changed the landscape on transfer pricing matters for good. This paper provides an up-to-date
review of this growing area of advice and enable you to tackle the current and future transfer pricing issues.

This paper covers the actual amendments to thte tax law and the implications of those changes.

Materials from this session:

Reportable tax positions

Author(s):  Judy MORRIS

The ATO’s reportable tax positions schedule is a “realtime” development which raises important issues for corporate taxpayers regarding governance, disclosure and management of their tax affairs. It also has significance for the self-assessment concept. This presentation focuses on teh following issues:

  • the what, when, how and why of the reportable tax positioh
  • now do “reasonably arguable” and “reasonable care” come into this?
  • two views of what is needed for real-time tax governance.
Materials from this session: