Dominic Moon

Dominic was approached by advisors for a family farming dynasty in Queensland’s Western Downs to modernise their trust structure which, because of the relatively recent introduction companies to the group, was creating enormous Division 7A headaches that needed to be dealt with.

The issue in restructuring the group was not so much income tax (as there are CGT rollovers that could easily have been applied to transition the trust to a company structure) but duty in Queensland on both land and business assets. The trust owned the rights to the core businesses and nearly all of the land in the group, with a potential duty liability of between $4.5 to 5million.

Dominic corporatised the structure with nominal CGT and duty and liaised with each of the family and farming boards and their financiers, to navigate the least resistance path to completion.

A group of well known oil refiners in Australia sought to reorganise their structure. The issue was bringing a disparate group of companies together with trusts under one corporate roof.

The brief was to do that in a manner that made maximum use of available income tax concessions and without triggering unnecessary duty liabilities.

After discussing the options with the group owners, it became apparent that income tax consolidation of the group under a single head company was the best fit for them. The particular issue was bringing discretionary trusts into the group as wholly owned subsidiaries and bringing the group together without triggering income tax issues both generally and as a result of the consolidation election.

This was achieved with considerable pre-planning together with valuable input from our clients. The end result was a simplified consolidated group structure with a minimal income tax and duty impact.

Dominic is currently assisting Australian and overseas clients in resisting default income tax assessments based on primary concepts of income. With the matter still in progress, after extensive further submissions and analysis by Dominic and his team, the proposed audit position paper outcome reduced from $185 million to $105 million. Upon completion of the audit, the income tax assessments reduced from $105 million to $33 million on objection.