One of the reasons you accumulate assets and savings is to ensure your loved ones are adequately looked after when you die. Your accountant is likely to have put in place strategies to save you tax and protect your assets. But without proper planning, this can mean that your assets don’t end up in the hands of the people you intend. FInd out more.
Founding a company is a lot easier than retaining control of it. Part of your journey will necessarily involve other people. First, it may be a co-founder. Then family and friend investors, and ultimately professional investors. During this evolution, the chances of you being left behind, and things getting out of control, increase exponentially. We’ll help you get back in control, with a binding entitlement to what you’re worth.
As a general rule, a company provides its shareholders with ‘limited liability’. This means that the extent of resources a shareholder risks when they invest in an enterprise is limited to the amount of capital they put into the company (or agree to put in). If the company runs out of resources, or gets hit with a nasty surprise, the capital may all be lost, but the shareholders are not obliged to put anything additional in. They have just ‘done their doe’.
The limitation of liability for shareholders has not really changed much over the centuries that limited liability companies have been around. What has changed, is the role and responsibility of directors.
Most Shareholder Agreements, Constitutions and Partnership Agreements provide ‘pre-emption’ rights. These are rights that require someone wanting to sell an interest in the enterprise, to first offer the interest to the other equity holders. But they do not necessarily require the majority to buy.
There really is only one sustainable career or endeavour – commoditisation. This is the work of taking something requiring high levels of knowledge, experience and creativity, and turning it into something that a novice can easily do for themselves, for free. If you want to maintain and grow your real value over an extended period, that is it. There is nothing else.
If you have a company then you have probably sat in a meeting with your accountant and heard the phrase ‘that may raise Division 7A issues’. Everyone usually then grumbles and nodes wisely, and moves on…Â But you may be asking yourself, ‘what the hell is Division 7A all about?’ Glad you asked.
In South Australia stamp duty is not payable on a transfer of real property from a trustee of a trust to a person who already has a defined beneficial interest in the property. For example, a transfer of property from the trustee of a unit trust to the unit holder. But there are a couple of tricks you need to be aware of.
A few judges and populist politicians have recently made some snarly comments about lawyers and ‘greedy’ people who are challenging Wills. Apparently, as a profession, we are getting a bit of ahead of ourselves in bringing too many of these cases to court. Read this article to get informed about the debate.
Everyone gets a $1.6 million cap on the assets that can support a tax-free super pension. You and your spouse each get a separate cap. But super pensions that pass to you from your spouse when they die may put you over your cap. This will have adverse tax outcomes. You need to plan for this as part of your estate planning.