Tax Planning

Plan the bill before it arrives

Money not spent is money earned. Every person and business must plan for their expenses and cash outflows, and reduce the impact where possible. Tax may be a significant part of your cash outlays, and it belongs in your overall business plan rather than as a surprise at the end of it.

Tax planning is not only calculating a future tax bill. It is developing strategies that reduce the impact and align your cash flow with your tax obligations – and building a structure that lets income be distributed and profits captured where the tax outcome is most favourable.

The catch is timing. Most of what changes a tax outcome has to be done before 30 June. After that, we are preparing a tax return and reporting decisions that are already made.

Where the savings actually come from

Timing of income and deductions

Bringing income forward or deferring it, prepaying deductible expenses, and choosing the year a capital purchase is made. These are the simplest levers and the ones most often missed, because they expire on 30 June.

Structure and distributions

The entity you trade or invest through decides the rate you pay and who pays it. We look at whether your current structure still fits, cover trust distribution resolutions before year end, and manage Division 7A loans and dividend planning so a company loan does not become a deemed dividend.

Superannuation

Concessional contributions are one of the few deductions you can still create deliberately. We check your available cap, whether you can use carry-forward amounts from earlier years, and – critically – that the contribution reaches the fund before 30 June, not merely leaves your account.

Super can also be planned across a couple. In some circumstances you can contribute to your spouse's super, or split part of your own concessional contributions across to them – which can even up two balances over time and, depending on their income, may attract a tax offset. Whether either is worth doing turns on your incomes, ages and balances, so it is a case to check rather than assume.

Capital gains

When you sell matters as much as what you sell. Holding periods, the timing of contracts, offsetting losses, and the small business CGT concessions where a business asset is involved. On a significant transaction, the planning has to happen before the contract is signed.

Cash flow and instalments

A tax plan that ignores cash flow is not a plan. We vary PAYG instalments where your position has changed, forecast the liability across the year, and tell you what to put aside and when – so the bill is funded rather than borrowed.

The tax planning year

• April – May. The planning meeting: an estimate of where the year will land, and the decisions still open to you.
• Before 30 June. Trust resolutions signed, super contributions received by the fund, planned purchases made, income and deductions timed.
• July – October. Records finalised and returns prepared. The outcome is already set by this point.
• Any time. A significant transaction – a sale, a restructure, a new venture – should be reviewed before it is committed to, not at year end.

Whether it is a significant transaction, a new business venture that needs a good strategy, or a regular annual profit and tax review, BTMH can advise on tax compliance and strategy and help implement the plan.

Our services look beyond the next tax bill to the overall after-tax outcome. We connect tax with your cash flow projections, growth strategies and personal goals, because only considering all the variables in a large-scale strategy brings the results you want.

If you are in business, tax planning sits alongside our other business services: accounting, bookkeeping and compliance, so the best outcome on your return is just a formality. You may also want a complimentary tax health check as a starting point.