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CPA PRACTICE
Business Tax Guide

Can We Help You Save an Extra $30,000 in Tax?

Discover the most common missed deductions and tax planning strategies that could be costing your business tens of thousands every year.

Missed Deductions
Structure Optimization
Planning Strategies
Impact Taxation And Financial Services Pty. Ltd. is a CPA Practice.
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.
General information only. Tax outcomes depend on individual circumstances, eligibility, and current tax law.

The Hidden Tax Savings

Every year, we help many new business clients review (and often amend) tax returns that were prepared by previous accountants. Unfortunately, we regularly find that legitimate deductions were missed or poor advice was given.

Average Additional Tax Savings

$30,000

compared to previous accountants

If you’re not yet a client of ours, it may be worth giving us a try. Below are some of the most common missed tax-saving opportunities we see.

1. Missed Legitimate Deductions

✅ Office Meals & Refreshments for Employees

This can include eligible meals and refreshments provided to employees (including business owners who are employees of their business). In many cases, these costs are deductible to the employer, however they are often incorrectly treated as “entertainment” and excluded.

Missed: $20,000–$30,000 per year

✅ Minor Benefits Exemption

Certain benefits provided to employees may be deductible to the employer. If each benefit is under $300 per employee, the business may be able to provide these benefits multiple times each year — and employees may receive them tax-free, depending on the specific circumstances.

Missed: $10,000–$20,000 per year

✅ Travel Allowances (No Receipts Required)

Employees travelling for work may be paid a daily travel allowance without needing receipts, as long as the travel is genuinely business-related and the business keeps appropriate evidence (such as a compliant travel schedule).

Missed: $20,000–$30,000 per year

2. Incorrect Structure Used

Both company structures and trust structures have their own advantages. However, when a business uses only one structure, it often misses valuable tax planning and asset protection opportunities that could be achieved through a combined approach.

For higher tax-paying business owners, we often recommend structures such as:

Option A
✅ A company operating the business
✅ A family trust as the shareholder
Option B
✅ A family trust operating the business
✅ A corporate beneficiary (bucket company)

These types of structures can provide:

Stronger tax planning flexibility
Better asset protection
Potentially significant reductions in overall tax across the family group

In some cases, the right strategy can reduce the effective tax rate close to 0%

(depending on income, structure, and compliance)

3. Missed Planning Strategies

In many cases, a previous accountant may have set up a good structure — but failed to properly follow through with ongoing planning.

For example, where a company structure is set up with a family trust as a shareholder, some accountants fail to consider:

  • Whether dividends should be paid each year
  • The best timing of distributions
  • How to manage tax outcomes properly across the family group

Sometimes, the planning is simply not executed — and the structure ends up underused, meaning major savings are missed.

Key Takeaway

The items above are only a few of the missed opportunities we identify regularly when reviewing business tax returns. A second opinion can often make a significant difference.

Latest Tax & Property Updates

Staying informed is the first step toward keeping more of what you earn. Here are the latest developments every business owner should know about.

ATO Alert Property Development Tax Avoidance Crackdown

New Taxpayer Alert TA 2026/1

The ATO has warned taxpayers using contrived property development arrangements to obtain a tax benefit will face stricter regulatory scrutiny and possible penalties. A full draft practical compliance guide (PCG) will follow.

SMSF Division 296 “Death Tax” Concerns

Transitional Arrangements Under Scrutiny

The revised Div 296 legislation has been labelled a “death tax” due to changes in treatment on death. Transitional arrangements only apply if an individual dies during the first year of the Div 296 tax.

Property Holiday Homes as Investments

8 Reasons Holiday Homes Don’t Make Profitable Investments

While Aussies adore lifestyle accommodation (around 700,000 holiday rentals owned by 1 in 12 households), purchasing a holiday property is usually not a smart property investment due to many extenuating circumstances.

Market First Home Buyer Scheme Impact

Surge in Lower-Priced Homes

Homes under the expanded Home Guarantee Scheme price caps recorded +3.6% growth in the December quarter vs +2.4% for homes above the cap. The 5% deposit guarantee has sharpened demand at lower price points.

Take the Next Step

If you would like to see how much tax you may be able to save, or have us help you amend your 2025 business tax return (if it has already been lodged), you’re welcome to book a consultation with us.

At Impact Taxation & Financial Services, we specialize in helping business owners like you navigate the complex world of tax planning. Our team has years of industry experience as Financial Controllers and Senior Financial Managers.

Ready to Save on Your Business Tax?

We provide free 30-minute consultations for all new clients to show you how to maximize and protect your wealth.

Book Your Free Consultation

Or call us directly:

1300 TAXSAV (1300 829 728)

[email protected]

3/80 Kitchener Parade, Bankstown, NSW 2200

Impact Taxation And Financial Services Pty. Ltd. is a CPA Practice.

Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

© 2026 Impact Taxation & Financial Services. All rights reserved.

General information only. Tax outcomes depend on individual circumstances, eligibility, and current tax law. This document does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Please consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

10 things you should consider before buying a property

Are you considering buying a property? Do you know you could miss opportunities to save thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars if you don’t plan well before the purchase?

Below are a few key considerations:

1. How should you set up your loan structure? If you don’t have a loan offset account for a rental property, after you make extra payments directly to the loan account, you can only claim interest deduction on the remaining balance of the loan. For tax purposes, this deductible balance can’t be changed even if you redraw the overpaid amount later. A good loan structure could also help you to stabilize interest rate and speed up loan repayment by combining a standard variable loan (with an offset account) and a fix rates account.

2. Timing of renovation. You might want to do a renovation right after you have bought the rental property. But do you know for any genuine repair & maintenance included in the renovation, you can claim an outright deduction against the rental income when the property is available for rental? If the work is done before the date when the property is available for rental, you can only claim the deduction against future capital gain when the property is sold. Depend on when you are going to sell, it could take years or up to decades before you can claim the deduction.

3. How should you split ownership? You might want to share the property ownership with a family member. For tax purposes, the percentage of ownership is based on the legal title, regardless of who is paying more on the mortgage. If the property will give you a tax profit, you might want to allocate more
ownership to the low-income earner to utilize the lower marginal tax rate. If it is giving you a tax loss, you might want to allocate more ownership to the high-income earner to utilize the loss. The goal is for the family to pay minimum tax together.

4. Should you use a family trust to purchase the property? There are many pros and cons related to a family trust. The advantages include tax savings on rental profit or capital gain, asset protection and succession planning on family wealth. However, family trust can’t distribute losses. All losses are trapped in the trust to be used to offset future trust profit. Therefore, you can’t utilize any rental loss in a trust to offset other income such as salary & wages. Family trusts also attract high accounting fees on initial setup and annual fees on financial statements and tax returns. State governments also charge much higher land tax on family trusts.

5. Will the income level change in future years for different owners? You might want to forecast the possible income for different owners to understand total tax payment / savings related to the property. This could also impact on your decision making on point 3 and 4 above.

6. Understand when you can treat your property as main residence to receive an exemption on capital gains tax. When eligible, even if you have received rental income, you could still treat your rental property as main residence and receive the exemption. To be eligible, you will need to treat it as your main residence at the beginning. Please check out this ATO link: Treating former home as main residence.

7. Decide whether you need to purchase a depreciation report. Most taxpayers don’t know that the depreciation on the building will need to be added back to calculate capital gains tax when the property is sold. When the property is held for more than 12 months, after applying the capital gains tax discount of 50%, it will effectively cut the tax rate by half at the time of sales. This makes depreciation deductions desirable for high income earners. However, for low-income earners it might not be ideal to claim depreciation as a rental deduction since they could be paying more on capital gains tax in the future. It could get more complicated if the property is under joint ownership between high and low income earners.

8. You might want to consider Centrelink payments for future or existing owners. Most Centrelink payments are income and asset tested. Before attaching a rental property to a family member who is receiving, or plan to receive government benefits, you might want to check the testing thresholds first to see if the Centrelink payment will be impacted. This is also applicable when you are making distributions from a family trust to different family members.

9. Have you considered using your SMSF (selfmanaged super fund) to make the purchase of a rental property? There are a lot of tax saving opportunities with a SMSF since the income tax rate is only 15%. And the capital gains tax rate is effectively only 10% after factoring in the 1/3 discount. The major downside with a SMSF is normally you can’t get the money out until you retire or on compassionate grounds (SMSF does have more flexibilities compared to normal retail super fund. But the choices are still very limited). It could be expensive to set up and operate a SMSF too. There are also strict legal requirements on the trustees. Penalties on incompliance could be severe. Tax law around SMSF is very complicated too. You will need to find a good tax accountant specialized in SMSF to help you to understand the structure, also do a cost-benefit analysis before setting it up.

10. Consider internal ownership changes. For your existing rental properties, you can also consider whether you should transfer the ownership between family members, or between different business structures (this is not applicable for SMSF). You might want to do this when the income level changes with family members, or rental property changes between tax profit and loss. Before the change, you need to consider the cost of transfer including capital gains tax, stamp duty, conveyancer fees, etc. Again, a cost-benefit analysis is a must before the change.

Last but not the least, did you combine all the above strategies and compare your choices? If you haven’t yet, how would you know that you have picked the best strategy to minimize your taxes? We can help you to factor in all considerations, compare different scenarios, also present you with a Property Prepurchase Report with all our findings to help you to make a decision. Contact us today to book in a consultation with an experienced tax accountant!

IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This is general advice only and does not consider your financial circumstances, needs and objectives. Before making any decision based on this document, you should assess your own circumstances or seek advice from your financial adviser and seek tax advice from your accountant.

Copyright © 2022 by Impact Taxation & Financial Services All Rights Reserved.