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The Treasury Laws Amendment (increasing the Instant Asset Write-Off for Small Business Entities) Bill 2019 was passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives this morning, to increase the threshold to $30,000 and expand the eligibility to medium sized businesses with a turnover of less than $50 million.

During September 2019, the Government re-introduced the Treasury Laws Amendment (Recovering Unpaid Superannuation) Bill 2019 into Parliament, which proposes to introduce a one-off superannuation guarantee (SG) amnesty for employers who have not always complied with their SG obligations. Those employers who voluntarily disclose their non-compliance to the ATO during the amnesty period would be; able to claim income tax deductions for the SG amounts disclosed, will not be charged the administration fee, and will not be subject to any further penalties.

The recent Full Federal Court decision in Mondelez v AMWU [2019] has held that employees are entitled to 10 days of personal/carer's leave irrespective of their pattern of work hours, regardless of whether they are full time or part time employees.

As a general rule, the trustees and beneficiaries of a deceased estate are able to disregard any CGT implications from the sale of a deceased person's principal residence, provided the sale of that property settles within two years of the deceased's death.

Following a review by the Senate Economics Legislation Committee in August 2019, the Treasury Laws Amendments (2019 Tax Integrity and Other Measures No 1) Bill 2019 was recently passed into law, denying tax deductions claimed for holding costs incurred when owning vacant land in a number of scenarios from 1 July 2019.

On 28 March 2019, Australia and Israel signed the first ever Double Tax Agreement (DTA) between the two countries. The Australian Government stated that the treaty will strengthen friendships and commercial relationships, create further opportunities for bilateral trade and investment between the two countries.

Last December we released a Tax Alert confirming that the Federal Government had revived its plan to remove access to the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) main residence exemption for non-residents, which will directly impact both expat Australians (living overseas for an extended period) and foreign tax residents.

Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has announced the Labor Party's (ALP) plan to introduce changes to both negative gearing and the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) discount to all investment assets. If introduced, these changes will have potentially far reaching implications for the Australian property market. The proposed changes are summarised below: