Working position
Estimate the position
An estimate of taxable income for the year, built from your year-to-date numbers rather than last year's return.
Accounting & Tax / Annual Planning
Plan ahead today.
Pay less tax tomorrow.
There is one rule in tax planning and everything else follows from it. It’s a year-round strategy, not a June scramble.
After 30 June we are reporting. The year is closed, the transactions are what they are, and the only remaining question is how accurately we describe them. That is a valuable job, it is not tax planning.
Planning before reporting
After 30 June,
the door is closed.
Before 30 JunePlanOptions still open
After 30 JuneReportOutcome already set
Why most owners never get a plan
The conversation happens after there is anything left to decide.
Because the conversation happens in October, when you're sitting across from your accountant finding out what you owe.
By then there is nothing left to decide. The bill is the bill. The meeting becomes an explanation instead of a strategy, and next year it happens again.
October: no decisions leftExplanation
Find out what you owe.
April / May: runway to change itStrategy
Estimate where you will land.
Planning means having that conversation in April or May, or when a significant transaction takes place, with an estimate of where you're going to land and enough runway to change it.
What annual tax planning covers
Your actual position.
Not a checklist.
A proper tax planning session works through your actual position, not a checklist.
Working position
Know when the cash leaves
What that means in tax and, more usefully, when the cash has to leave the account.
Working position
Use timing legitimately
Income and deductible expenditure that can legitimately fall on one side of 30 June or the other.
The useful output
Strategies that change the forecast
The strategies that can impact your forecast outcome and make a difference to your family wealth position; for example:
- 01
Superannuation contributions, and whether making them is the right call for this business this year
- 02
Trust distribution resolutions, which have to be made before 30 June to be effective
- 03
Division 7A loan accounts, before they become a deemed dividend rather than a loan
- 04
Reviewing and ensuring your structure still fits the business you now have, rather than the one you had when you set it up
What a session actually looks like
Three working papers.
One short plan.
Three steps, usually across two or three weeks.
- Forecast
Build the 30 June position
We start with your year-to-date file and build a forecast to 30 June. That gives us an estimated taxable position rather than a guess, and it's the piece most owners have never seen.
Working - Options
Attach the cash-flow effect
Then we work through the options that are genuinely open to you, with the cash-flow effect of each one attached. A deduction that costs you $40,000 of cash to save $12,000 of tax is not automatically a good idea, and you'd be surprised how often it's presented as one.
Working - Action
Leave with the dates and amounts
You get a short written plan with the actions, the dates and the amounts. Not just a report. A list of things to do before 30 June.
Ready to act
The line we will not cross
Planning is legal.
Schemes are not.
The ATO's own position is that you have the right to arrange your financial affairs to keep your tax to a minimum. That is tax planning, and it is entirely lawful.
What isn't lawful is an arrangement with no purpose other than a tax result. If someone is selling you a structure whose only feature is the deduction, that's a scheme, and the penalties land on you rather than on them.
We won't put you near that line. Everything we recommend has to make commercial sense with the tax benefit stripped out.
Commercial purposeTax benefit
Legislation note / 01
The change that belongs in this year's plan
Capital gains now carry a date decision.
Enacted26 Jun 2026Parliament
What changed
On 26 June 2026 Parliament enacted the most significant change to capital gains tax since 1999. From 1 July 2027 the 50% CGT discount for individuals and trusts is replaced with cost base indexation, a new 30% minimum tax applies to capital gains made by Australian resident individuals and pre-CGT assets acquired before 20 September 1985, including those held by companies, come into the CGT regime.
Who needs to act
Say you're likely to sell a business, a property or a parcel of shares in the next few years. Whether you realise that gain before or after 1 July 2027 is now a live planning decision with a hard date attached.
Small Business CGT Concessionsthe concessions that survive the change, and the thresholds that decide whether you qualify.
Knowing the number early
Worth more than reducing it.
Owners tend to think tax planning is only about paying less. The bigger win is usually knowing what's coming.
Known in AprilA line in the forecastProvisioned
Unknown until OctoberAn empty account in NovemberUnplanned
A tax bill you've known about since April is a line in the forecast. The same bill arriving unannounced in October is the reason the account is empty in November, and the reason a payment plan gets entered into.
A lot of businesses carrying an ATO debt never had a profitability problem. They had a provisioning problem, and nobody told them the number in time to set the money aside.
Beyond the return
Planning is a conversation about the business.
Half of what comes out of a good planning session isn’t a tax decision at all.
Business Advisory & CFO Advisoryfor owners who'd rather have that conversation monthly than once a year.
Your margin has slipped four points and nobody noticed.
One division has been carrying another for two years.
The drawings you've been taking have quietly become a Division 7A problem.
The tax outcome is the reason to book the meeting. It's rarely the most valuable thing that comes out of it.
Who this is for
Something changed this year.
That is usually the signal.
Worth planning now
Business owners with something to plan. If you're a company, trust or partnership, there are decisions worth making before June that you currently aren't making.
It's worth most when something in the year is unusual. A strong year after a flat one. An asset sale. A new entity. A partner coming in or going out. Those are the years where the difference between planning and reporting is measured in real money.
Maybe not yet
If you're a sole trader with a straightforward year and no assets in play, an honest answer is that planning may not earn its fee yet.
We'll tell you that rather than sell you a session.
Start here
Come while there is still something to decide.
The useful window is roughly March to May. Come earlier and the estimate is soft; come later and you’re watching the door close. Book a consultation and we’ll tell you whether there’s anything worth planning this year.
Book a consultation