Stamp duty – not just for land purchases Most people know that if you purchase land in NSW, you’ll have to pay stamp duty on the purchase. What’s less well known is that other kinds of transactions can also attract stamp duty.   Just for example _ declaring a trust,  acquiring a partnership interest,  acquiring shares […]

The amounts Uber pays to drivers (after Uber collects the amounts from passengers on behalf of the drivers) are “wages” for payroll tax purposes.  This was decided by the NSW Court of Appeal in Chief Commissioner of State Revenue v Uber Australia Pty Ltd [2025] NSWCA 172.   The 122-page decision of the Court of Appeal […]

Payments to a contractor can be subject to payroll tax under multiple bases.  Of these bases, 3 are now well-known.  This article summarises the 3 “known” bases and also discusses a potential 4th basis.  Below, when I refer to a “section” (sometimes abbreviated to “s”) I am referring to a section of the NSW Payroll […]

If you’ve been notified that your tax affairs are under “investigation”, “review” or “audit” by the Australian Taxation Office (“ATO“) or by Revenue NSW, you may be wondering how to respond and what is likely to happen next.  This blogpost tries to address those questions.  The post considers a situation where it is the ATO who […]

If you live overseas for a period, you may be a “foreign resident” for Australian tax purposes, even though you are an Australian citizen.  Being a “foreign resident” is often advantageous from an Australian tax perspective because, generally speaking, a foreign resident is not required to pay Australian tax on their overseas income (whereas an […]

Your employment package may include interests under an employee stock.

If a significant sum is transferred to you from overseas, the ATO will be alerted to the transfer and may seek to tax the amount on the basis that it represents income or gains made while you were an Australian resident.

A private company can issue a special kind of share, called a dividend access share (“DAS”)

This post is intended for readers who are already familiar with the concepts of Division 7A, ‘unpaid entitlements to trust income’, section 109N complying loans, and “sub-trust” arrangements of the kind described in Taxation Ruling TR 2010/3 and Practice Statement PS LA 2010/4.

Whether varying the terms of a trust will trigger a capital gains tax (“CGT”) liability is the subject of a recent ATO ruling (Taxation Determination TD 2012/21 – issued on 24 October 2012).   TD 2012/21 is the ATO’s final ruling on this topic  – a draft (TD 2012/D4) was issued earlier this year, and discussed […]

If an individual sells shares, the income tax treatment will depend on whether the taxpayer carries on a business of buying and selling shares, or instead, is merely investing in shares.

Changing the terms of a trust has historically been “risky” from an income tax perspective.  There was always a concern that the Commissioner of Taxation may have considered that the change triggered a capital gains tax liability (on the basis that the change caused a “resettlement” of the trust).