Tax Considerations

There are a variety of taxes impacting on estate planning in Australia. Among those that impact on the formulating of an estate plan are:

• Capital gains tax, with 3 key concessions that are often important from an estate planning perspective, ie the main residence exemption, the small business CGT concessions and the rollover concessions for deceased estates;
• Land transfer duty, so often an issue if real estate needs to be sold to fund bequests;
• GST, with separate rules relating to different types of assets;
• Land tax on non-primary production land;
• Federal and state taxes on vacant residential land; and
• Income tax on income retained in a deceased estate.