Legal Insights
Political Deepfakes – Part 1
Although digital manipulation of images and video has been around for some time, the combination of software that improves the realism of the fake and the speed at which fakes can be generated and disseminated to targeted audiences has made headlines in the political sphere over the last year or so. The manipulation of video images using artificial intelligence has been called ‘deepfake’, a portmanteau of ‘deep learning’ and ‘fake’.
Is your Charity operating overseas?
Last week, the Australia Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission introduced External Conduct Standards (ECS), with which all charities that operate overseas (including Basic Religious Charities) must comply.
Ball is in Court –Tennis Australia Directors under ASIC spotlight
At the end of last year, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia against Harold Mitchell and Stephen Healy, two former directors of Tennis Australia Limited.
2019 State Budget: Economic entitlement provisions expanded
Landholder duty is a state tax that was introduced to impose duty on acquisitions in landholding entities.
The ‘economic entitlement’ provisions of the landholder regime are an integrity measure unique to Victoria. Previously, they applied duty to transactions which provide the acquirer with an economic entitlement that amounts to an interest of 50% or more in a private landholder. This specifically impacts arrangements where developers or builders agree with a landholder to receive 50% or more of the profits or income of a landholder’s land without actually acquiring an interest in the landholding entity.
Further reduced payroll tax for regional businesses
Since 1 July 2017, a lower Victoria payroll tax rate of 3.65% has applied to wages paid by regional employers. This rate was further reduced to 2.425% from 1 July 2018.
Tax Disputes Part 2 - Voluntary Disclosures
This is the second in a series of articles on strategies that can be employed in a tax dispute with the ATO.
Tax disputes can be costly, time consuming, and stressful, even if the taxpayer is ultimately successful. When approached by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), we will always advise clients to engage with the ATO to either resolve or narrow the issues in dispute as quickly as possible.
Regional growth - private company access to equity crowd funding
The long awaited extension of the Corporations Act Crowd-sourced Equity Funding (CSF) regime to private companies is now in place.
Directors should consider climate change risks
‘Climate-related risks’ have moved from a corporate buzzword to an actionable obligation for company directors, who should consider these risks in the context of their organisation and understand that a failure to act with regards to a climate-related risk can result in a contravention of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (Act).
The in-house dilemma: labour v capital
I was intrigued by the high level numbers coming out of the Australian Corporate Counsel report '2017 Benchmarks and Leading Practices' on what in-house teams were spending their money on.
The weakness of a connected business
All businesses increasingly rely on other service providers to deliver their products and services, and even a small business will have a surprisingly large supply chain made of many large and small suppliers (who of course have many of their own suppliers).