Budget changes introduced to parliament

In the last two issues of TaxVine, we notified members that two Bills introducing some of the small business concessions from this year's Budget were introduced into Parliament. They are Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Measures No 1) Bill 2015 which captures the cut to the company tax rate to 28.5% for small business companies and Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Measures No 2) Bill 2015 which makes changes to the accelerated depreciation provisions.

The Bills passed relatively seamlessly through the House of Representatives and are due to be introduced into the Senate when Parliament resumes sitting next week. The big question is whether they will pass the Senate unscathed before Parliament rises at the end of the Winter sitting on 25 June. Hot on their heels are likely to be Bills introducing the rest of the measures due to start soon – mainly the tax offset (the 5% discount capped at $1,000) for business income from unincorporated entities, the change to FBT for work-related expenses and deductibility for professional expenses incurred at start-up. We will notify members through future issues of TaxVine when this happens.

This week, we lodged our submission on multinational tax avoidance in response to the Exposure Draft issued on Budget night. A copy of our submission can be found here.

We are also working on our submission in response to the other exposure draft issued on Budget night in relation to the proposed GST integrity measure.

We also made a submission to the Senate Inquiry on the proposed taxation of employee share scheme rule changes. A copy of our submission is available on our website.

The progression of this year's Budget measures seems to be occurring at lightning speed compared to the glacial pace at which some of last year's Budget measures progressed. Let's hope this continues.

Stephanie Caredes CTA is a Tax Counsel of The Tax Institute.

The Tax Institute is Australia’s leading professional association in tax. Its 13,000 members include tax agents, accountants and lawyers as well as tax practitioners in corporations, government and academia.

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