2024 Year End Game Plan

Our 2024 Year End GamePlan ensures you will meet all your tax obligations and can work strategically towards reducing your tax, plan your tax and manage your cash flow better. Between now and June 30 there are many things for business owners that must be prepared in a specific order. Our 2024 Year End Gameplan services are tax deductible.

This year’s Budget Night will be one to watch – with cost of living, Stage 3 income tax cuts, manufacturing and industry policy as well as the net zero transition all under the spotlight. The 2024 Budget is expected to set up the Albanese Government’s priorities for their re-election campaign.

We want to help you with our expert tax and accounting advice to navigate all of these complex changes and make the lead up to 30 June as smooth as possible for you.

Here is the order of the key tax planning services we recommend for you over the coming months, in addition to a cost guide on our services.

2024 Year End Game Plan

Discretionary (Family) Trust Distributions
Tax Planning
FBT Return
PCG 2021/4 Professional Firm Profit (where applicable)

DISCRETIONARY (FAMILY) TRUST DISTRIBUTIONS

Big Changes To Tax Laws and Family Trust Law

The last 2 years have seen some of the biggest changes in decades to tax laws and also laws affecting Family Trusts.

They include:

New Tax Rulings (relating to S100A of the Income Tax Assessment Act) from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) that may dramatically restrict how you can distribute profits from a Family Trust out to your family.
A Court unwinding a Trustee’s Family Trust Distribution when 2 children complained they didn’t get enough money.
New guidance from the ATO that affects “Professionals” and restricts the way they can spread their income across their family group.

On top of this we will have a Federal Budget in May 2024 where we expect significant tax and superannuation changes and the usual pre-30 June tax planning opportunities to save tax.

We want to help you navigate these changes with our expert tax and accounting advice to assist you through all of these complex changes to make the lead up to 30 June as smooth as possible for you.

Discretionary (Family) Trust Distributions

Here is the order of our key services we recommend you will need over the coming months:

We will review your Trust Deed to let you know if you need to consider varying your Trust Deed to remove certain beneficiaries and therefore remove the risk of them forcing the Trustee to pay Trust profits to them.

In June 2024 and based on our Tax Planning Report to you, we will prepare a 2024 Trust Distribution Resolution for any Discretionary Trusts or Family Trusts that you have. You need to sign these before 30 June 2024 or the ATO may tax your Trust at the highest rate of 47% on any trust profits.

As part of our Trust Distribution Resolution document pack that we send to you, we will also provide you with a Payment Instructions for that each Trust beneficiary can sign in the first week of July 2024. This new document for 2024 is needed to prove to the ATO that your Trust’s payments to beneficiaries are not part of what S100A of the tax legislation calls a “reimbursement agreement”, resulting in tax of 47% being assessed on these Trust distributions.

Family Trust Distributions

Our advice will ensure that:

Your Trust Deed doesn’t expose you to beneficiaries forcing the Trustee to pay them profits from your Trust.
Your 2024 Trust Distributions will be signed before 30 June 2024 to avoid your Trust being taxed at 47% of its profits.
You will have taken specific steps to make it very difficult for the ATO to apply its new interpretation of S100A to your Trust and impose tax at 47% on certain Trust distributions.

REDUCING YOUR TAX + PLANNING FOR YOUR TAX PAYMENTS

Reducing Your Tax + Planning For Your Tax Payments

Here is the order of the key tax planning services we recommend for you over the coming months:

In May/June 2024, we’ll consider strategies to reduce your tax after the Federal Budget.
We can then provide you with a Tax Planning Report that will give you specific actions to reduce your tax, including the best way to spread business profits across family members to provide for their needs.

Based on our Tax Planning Report, we can then prepare your 2024 Trust Distribution Resolution for any Discretionary Trusts or Family Trusts that you have. You need to sign these before 30 June 2024 or the ATO may tax your Trust at the highest rate of 47% on any trust profits.

In July 2024 we can prepare a TaxFlow Plan for you. The important report will outline your next 18 months of tax payments for all individuals and entities in your group – summarised in a cashflow format with totals. This makes it so much easier for you to plan for your tax payments and discuss with us your options for reducing any PAYG instalments that the ATO may automatically assess for you.

2024 Tax Planning Report

Our advice will help you to:

Reduce your tax payable.
Work out the best way to distribute business profits to your family to provide for their needs.
Have the information needed to prepare your Trust Distribution Resolutions
Understand what your next 18 months tax payments are and when they are due.

FBT – REDUCE ATO AUDIT PERIOD + FINALISING YOUR 2024 STP INFORMATION

Key Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) services we recommend

In April 2024 you will need to complete our brief FBT Questionnaire and send it back to us so that we can work out what fringe benefits you may have provided to employees or Directors and how much FBT may be payable.

In April/May 2024 we strongly recommend that we prepare your 20243 FBT Return (including employee declarations) and lodge a 2024 FBT Return for you, even if it has NIL FBT payable. This restricts the ATO to a 3 year FBT audit period – otherwise the ATO can go back an unlimited number of years to audit your business for FBT. Nothing like having peace of mind that the ATO can’t go back unlimited years to attack you!

Prior to 14 July 2024, you will be able to use the “reportable benefit” summary information included in our 2024 FBT Report to include for each employee in your Single Touch Payroll (STP) year-end finalisation declaration. This information is required by the ATO so that it can be included in your employee’s year end Income Statements.

Lodgement of 2024 Fringe Benefits Tax Return

If we prepare and lodge your 2024 FBT Return, then the length of time the ATO can audit you for FBT purposes is limited to just 3 years. By limiting this potential ATO audit period to just 3 years, the risk to your business of having to pay large amount of FBT and penalties in the future is vastly reduced.

PCG 2021/4 – PROFESSIONAL FIRM PROFIT

PCG explained and who it affects

The ATO guidance (PCG 2021/4) totally changes the way that professional firm profits can be allocated (or split) among a family group from 1 July 2022 onwards.

As a result, most professionals will end up paying larger amounts of tax from the 2023 financial year onwards. The new ATO guidelines requires Professional Firm clients (Eg, Accountant, lawyers, professional services, architects etc) to annually review their allocation of professional firm profits and then to document their assessment of their eligibility to apply the PCG 2021/4 guidelines.

PLAN OF WORK AND PRICE

DATE	ACTION	WHY IS THIS NEEDED? (BENEFIT TO YOU)	PRICE ESTIMATE EX GST
April 2024	Trust Deed Review	Understand if your Trust Deed needs to be varied before 30 June 2024 to exclude specific beneficiaries who could try to take over your Trust	NIL for Review, price to be quoted for variation
April 2024	2023 Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) Return preparation + lodgement	- FBT ATO audit period restricted to 3 years - STP Reportable Benefits for employees	$500 - $2,000
May 2024	Professional Services PCG	- Annual review of your profit allocation and document your assessment with a grading under the PCG 2021/4 guidelines.	$1,000
May + June 2024	2024 Tax Planning review + Federal Election update	- Reduce your 2024 tax - Understand your key pre-30 June 2024 year end business actions	$750 - $2,000
June 2024	2024 Trust Distribution Resolution preparation + Beneficiary Payment Instructions	- Ensure your Trust is not taxed at 47% on its profits	$350 per Trust Additional $250 for Beneficiary Payment Instructions
	IF APPLICABLE Section 100A Trust Distribution Advice Report	- Outline the impact of the s100A guidelines which changes the way profits from a Discretionary Trust (also known as a Family Trust) can be allocated.	From $500
July 2024	18 month Tax Flow Projection	Know when your tax is payable	$350