Happy New Year!!
A key question for business operators is to decide what information sources you should be using to guide you in formulating business decisions. This is the third part of this series which commenced in November 2017.
You will probably benefit by monitoring other key data including:
A key source of information is from:
If you would like to discuss any of these key data sources, please contact us.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has alleged the time and wage records provided could not be correct, because the company had been knowingly using its payroll software in a manner that produced false records.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has indicated that payroll record-keeping practises are high on the regulators hit list. In 2016/17 about 66% of the Fair Work Ombudsman court cases involved alleged poor record-keeping or pay slip contraventions.
After a long wait the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has licensed the first group of crowd sourced funding intermediaries under the Australian government’s new Crowd-Sourced Funding Capital Raising Regime.
The announcement by ASIC Commissioner, John Price, that seven companies had been appointed as part of the initial group of intermediaries, enabled the “start button” to be pushed on what could be one of the most significant contributions to the growth of small and medium size companies in Australian history.
The opportunity to consider raising up to $5 million every 12 months from the public is available to every private company that agrees to convert to an unlisted public company. This process is not complicated and ASIC has released new forms and procedures to make this process relatively simple.
Companies which have converted to an unlisted public company and which have an annual group turnover of less than $25 million and group gross assets of less than $25 million and are not listed on any Stock Exchange will be able to utilise the Crowd Sourced Funding Capital Raising Regime.
The Federal Treasurer has tabled proposed amendments in Federal Parliament which would enable private companies to be able to raise capital utilising crowd sourced funding without having to convert to an unlisted public company. The proposed legislation has not yet been debated nor passed by Parliament. Based on the timelines that were adopted by the government for the commencement of the present version of Crowd Sourced Funding and Early Stage Innovation Company Legislation, it would probably be October/November 2018 before the amended legislation would be able to be used.
In the meanwhile, significant numbers of companies are expected to commence the process to be able to raise capital under the current rules.
The initial group of intermediaries who each hold an Australian Financial Services Licence appointed by ASIC are:
Unfortunately many businesses, both small and large, still encounter significant financial costs because their businesses have not registered a customer, or the owner of a property at which the business had an asset situated, on the Personal Property Securities Register.
One area that is causing a lot of problems, particularly for subcontractors, is preferential payment claims received from liquidators of companies that were customers of the business. In most cases, the subcontractor could have avoided the financial costs, if the subcontractor had registered their customer on the Personal Property Securities Register.
Non-registration on the PPSR can cause significant problems for other types of businesses. There are a number of different issues that vary from business to business relating to the PPSR summarised as follows:
Retail Business:
Trades/Subcontractors:
Farmers/Primary Producers:
Farm Suppliers:
Thoroughbred Horses:
Manufacturers:
Wholesalers:
These are some of the items that should be examined to determine whether a registration should be made on the Personal Property Securities Register to protect the business' assets. If you would like to have a discussion about the implementation of a strategy, appropriate for your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
When the government established the Early Stage Innovation Company amendments to the Taxation Act some people were surprised as to why this legislation was enacted via the Taxation Act and not the Companies Act.
The reason was that the Early Stage Innovation Company legislation introduced some attractive taxation benefits for investors. The company that receives investors' funds, for the issue of ordinary shares, do not receive any taxation benefit relating to the receipt of those funds (other than much needed capital for their businesses) the taxation benefits are solely for investors.
Retail investors can invest up to $50,000, in a 12 month period, to an Early Stage Innovation Company to be eligible to obtain the taxation benefits. There is no limit to the amount of investment that a sophisticated investor can make.
Subject to the Australian Taxation Office and AusIndustry being satisfied that the company is an Early Stage Innovation Company, investors will obtain a 20% tax rebate on the amount of the investment that they made. The maximum tax rebate for a retail investor is $10,000 and for a sophisticated investor the maximum tax rebate is $200,000.
The investors are also potentially entitled to the benefit of a capital gains tax exemption if they hold those shares in the company for more than 12 months and less than 10 years.
The government has introduced these incentives to encourage investors to consider investing in new innovative companies in Australia that have developed new products, processes, services, marketing or organisational methodologies.
An eligible company will normally be under three years of age (although in some cases the company could be up to 6 years of age) with expenditure in the previous year of less than $1 million and income in the previous year of less than $200,000, not including any grant income received from the Accelerating Commercialisation Grant.
If you would like to have a discussion with us about potential investment into an Early Stage Innovation Company, please do not hesitate to contact us.
The Australian government’s Business Growth Grants Program is targeted at companies which operate in one of the following sectors:
Businesses that provide enabling or supporting technologies, inputs or services to drive business growth or improve business competitiveness in one or more of the above sectors from the enabling technologies sectors including:
with turnovers over $1.5 million per annum (in northern Australia $750,000) and under $100 million that have been in operation for more than three years could be eligible for a Business Growth Grant of up to $20,000, on a 50% funding basis, to undertake virtually any activity which will contribute to an improvement in the company’s performance.
If your company operates in any of these industry sectors and you are interested in applying for this grant, could you please contact us?
Posted in Towers Business News on Monday, 27 August 2018