The Budget confirmed the Treasurer’s earlier announcement that the Government would raise the eligibility age for the Age Pension to 70 by 2035. The Government announced that, from 1 July 2025, the Age Pension qualifying age will continue to rise by 6 months every 2 years, from the qualifying age of 67 years that will apply by…
Instead of pausing the superannuation guarantee rate at 9.25%, as previously announced, the Government will now increase the SG rate to 9.5% on 1 July 2014 (as currently legislated) and leave it at this level until 30 June 2018. The SG charge percentage will then increase by 0.5% each year until it reaches 12% from 2022-23, a year later…
The Government will allow individuals the option of withdrawing superannuation contributions in excess of the non-concessional contributions cap made from 1 July 2013 and any associated earnings, with these earnings to instead be taxed at the individual’s marginal tax rate. The measure will seek to provide a process to addresses all inadvertent breaches of the superannuation contribution…
The seafarer tax offset will be abolished from 1 July 2015. The seafarer offset is potentially available to any Australian company that employs at least one Australian resident for a minimum of 91 days in the income year on a voyage as a master, deck officer, integrated rating, steward or engineer. The route of the voyage must…
The Government has announced that it will provide small exploration companies with a refundable tax offset for “greenfields” exploration costs under the “Exploration Development Incentive” program to fund exploration for new mineral deposits. The “Incentive” program will target junior exploration companies and will be capped at id=”mce_marker”00m. Date of effect – The “Incentive” program will…
The Government will clarify the treatment of realignments of interests between joint venture partners in the minerals and petroleum industry. The measure will only apply to changes of ownership within a common project (which includes combining neighbouring fields into one project and sharing expenditure in areas such as planning, research and construction of infrastructure). This…
The defeat in the Senate of the Government’s Bills to repeal the carbon tax and the mining tax mean the related repeal of the associated income tax changes is also on hold, creating uncertainty for taxpayers. The defeated Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013 had proposed the following tax-related measures: repeal…
It had been expected that the Budget might announce long-awaited changes to essentially simplify Div 83A ITAA 1997 governing the application of the employee share scheme (ESS) rules, however, the Budget was silent on this. The rules, which have operated since 1 July 2009, have been repeatedly criticised as too complex and in need of simplifying and that…
The rates of the refundable and non-refundable R&D tax offsets will be reduced by 1.5 percentage points, with effect from 1 July 2014. This means that the refundable offset will be reduced to 43.5% and the non-refundable offset will be reduced to 38.5%. The refundable offset is available to R&D entities with an aggregated annual turnover of…
The mining tax legislation as originally passed contained associated income tax measures, one of which was increasing the instant asset write-off (ie the outright deduction for low value assets) for small business entities (ie generally, those with aggregated turnover of less than $2m) to $6,500. However, the Government’s Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other…