Tax

Smart tax strategies to keep more in your pocket.

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You shouldn’t pay more tax than you need to, as less tax means more money to create your best life.

We’ll help you use the rules to your advantage, by investing tax effectively, maximising deductions and working with the right accountant.

We’ll help create strategies and manage investments to optimise the opportunities you have to reduce your tax - whether that be personally, via a trust, super or other entities.

Managing your income and investments tax efficiently can include:

  • Selecting the right ownership structure for investments whether it’s individually, jointly, super, bond, family trust or company structure.
  • Making tax-deductible contributions to system including the potential use of the catch-up system
  • Managing the timing of capital gains events
  • Creating tax-exempt pension accounts and managing the withdrawals and income streams
  • Structuring your debts to optimise tax benefits
  • Working with the right accountant

We don’t offer in-house tax & accounting services, but can work either with your accountant or help you foster a relationship with a new one.

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FAQs

While the industry has been treating people like walking wallets, we’ve recreated and redefined financial advice - we call it financial life management. It’s based on the understanding that your life and finances are inseparable, and money is just a resource to give you choices and help you live the life you want.

We focus on proven investments such as cash, term deposits, shares, ETF’s, managed funds, and property. We avoid overly speculative investments and get rich quick schemes. We have access to private market opportunities including private equity, venture capital, real assets, and hedge funds. This diverse set of assets encompasses a broader range of strategies, that allow investors to generate absolute returns uncorrelated to traditional investment markets. Private market opportunities are generally appropriate for clients with portfolios exceeding $2m.

There are the traditional asset classes of shares, property, bonds and cash. Beyond these, alternative options include private equity, venture capital, direct bonds and wholesale property syndicates. Of course, what's suitable will depend on your goals, timeframe and temperament for investing.

There are many ways to manage tax wisely. These include making tax-effective super contributions, debt recycling, managing capital gains tax tactically, and utilising tax-efficient investment vehicles such as super, family trusts, or investment bonds. We find that almost all clients can do things more tax effectively with strategic planning.

While receiving an inheritance itself is tax-free, beneficiaries should be aware of potential tax implications when managing or disposing of inherited assets.

Transition-to-retirement (TTR) legislation allows Australians who’ve reached preservation age but are still working to access their super by drawing a regular income stream. This is generally a strategy to facilitate a reduction in working hours in the years leading up to retirement, but can also be used as a tax strategy to create the cash flow needed to make tax-deductible contributions to super.

Yes, often you can. A superannuation cash-out re-contribution strategy involves withdrawing funds from your super (tax-free if you're over 60) and re-contributing them as non-concessional contributions. This increases the tax-free component of your super, reducing, or even eliminating potential tax payable by non-dependent beneficiaries (like adult children) upon your death. The age limit for non-concessional contributions increased to 75 on July 1, 2022. Resultantly, we've made this a common strategy for our retired clients, often leading to hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings.

It depends on your goals and circumstances. What's best may be one or a combination of those strategies. Making super contributions often creates a better financial outcome due to the tax deductions available, however, what’s optimal varies based on income levels, interest rates, proximity to retirement and the emotions associated with debt and share markets.

Family trusts offer several benefits. They enable trustees to 'stream' investment income to family members on lower marginal tax rates to reduce the overall tax burden on the family or couple. Family trusts can also provide asset protection from business liabilities and legal claims, as well as helping to facilitate intergenerational wealth transfer.

Common structures include family trusts, superannuation, companies and investment bonds. All structures vary in tax rates both for income and capital gains, flexibility, asset protection and estate planning. We'll help you determine the right vehicles to manage your wealth based on your circumstances.

Catch-up concessional contributions allow you to use unused cap amounts from the previous five years, starting from 2018-19. You can contribute up to $30,000 annually, plus unused amounts, if your total super balance is under $500,000 on June 30 of the previous year. This is a common strategy we recommend which can result in Verse clients saving tens of thousands in income tax.

Redundancy payments in Australia are tax-free up to a limit based on years of service. Amounts exceeding the tax-free limit are taxed at concessional rates.

There are a lot of variables to carefully consider with employee share schemes. If there is a considerable concentration of your wealth in the company you work for, it's often wise to sell a portion of your shares to diversify. This will reduce your risk by ensuring your financial future isn't a bet on the future success of your employer. In doing so, it's important to understand the tax implications, what you can do to manage capital gains tax (CGT), and have a plan for the proceeds.

Small business CGT concessions are tax benefits that allow eligible business owners to reduce, disregard, or defer capital gains tax on the sale of their business. These concessions include the 15-year exemption, 50% active asset reduction, retirement exemption, and small business rollover, which can be applied individually or in combination to significantly lower your tax burden.

One-off financial advice fees are generally deductible to the extent that they relate to tax advice. Ongoing financial advice fees are generally deductible to the extent that relate to producing assessable income. Before claiming a deduction, we recommend sharing your Summary of Advice, invoices, and our estimate on what may be deductible to you with your qualified accountant.  

Dad to Brady, Charlie & Archie. Golfer. Lifelong learner. Hyrox athlete. Loyal Saints fan.