All owner-operated businesses in Australia

2026-09-03

Family trusts get a 30 cent floor in 2028. The draft law out today adds a way around it

If you take your profit out of a family trust, read this one. From 1 July 2028 money that runs through a discretionary trust is taxed at a minimum of 30 cents in the dollar, no matter who you distribute it to. The draft law landed this morning, and tucked inside it is a new option that lets you keep the trust and still avoid the tax. Submissions close on 18 September. Below: whether it hits you at all, what each of your four options costs, and why the sale of your business is the part you can stop worrying about.

2026-08-28

Regulated power prices fell up to 20.9% in July. Most owners will never see a cent of it

Somewhere in your July or August paperwork is the first power bill priced under the new 2026-27 rules, and it is worth two minutes of your attention. The regulated price for a small business fell hard on 1 July, by as much as 20.9% in parts of New South Wales. But that cut only lands automatically on the minority of businesses still on a default plan. If you are on a market contract, which most owners are, nothing in that bill moved unless your retailer chose to move it. And the $150 federal rebate that was quietly padding last year's bills stopped in December. Cheaper year, possibly bigger bill. Here is how to actually collect the cut.

2026-08-24

Sell up and put the money in super? Your balance on 30 June 2027 now sets a tax bill

Most coverage of Division 296 has been written for people who already have millions in super. That is not the readership that gets caught. The owner who gets caught is the one who sells a business, does the completely normal thing of putting the proceeds into super under the small business CGT cap, and discovers that the balance the sale just created is the balance a new tax measures. The year it first applies is the year you are in. And for this first year only, the date that decides it is 30 June 2027, which gives you about ten months to make the decisions that matter.

2026-08-01

The $20,000 instant asset write-off is not law, and the year it covers is already running

If you are about to buy an espresso machine, a new set of chairs or a treatment bed, here is the honest position: nobody can tell you today what that purchase is worth in tax. The $20,000 instant asset write-off ran out on 30 June 2026, and the replacement announced in the May Budget has not passed Parliament. The threshold actually written in the law right now, for the year you are trading in, is $1,000. This page covers what that does to your cash, what it does not do, and the one move that could genuinely cost you if you get it wrong.

2026-07-22

Payday Super started on 1 July 2026. It does not cost you more, until you get it wrong

Straight answer, because you are busy: Payday Super does not raise the amount of super you pay. It is still 12%. What changed on 1 July 2026 is the timing. You now pay super every time you run payroll, not once a quarter, and it has to land in your team's funds within 7 business days. So the hit is not on your profit-and-loss, it is on your bank balance and on what it costs you if you are late. Here is exactly what moved, what it does to your cash, and the one part that quietly shows up years later when you sell.