The deadline for lodging your Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) registered charity’s Annual Information Statement (AIS) is 30 June, unless you have applied to the ACNC to have a different reporting period. If charities fail to submit their AIS for two consecutive years, they will have their charity status revoked.

Whilst not a conventional topic for a lawyer’s article, I thought I would use this article as an opportunity to share Harwood Andrews’ recent certification as a B Corp and hopefully encourage other businesses in the Geelong and the Surf Coast region to do the same. 

The transitional period for trustees of public ancillary funds to amend their fund’s governing rules to comply with the public ancillary fund guidelines closes on 1 July 2015. Public ancillary funds and their trustees must comply with these guidelines if the funds are to remain endorsed as deductible gift recipients.

As well as the fund losing entitlement to DGR endorsement, failure to comply with the guidelines could lead to the trustee incurring administrative penalties.

The Federal Government has announced as part of its 2015 Federal Budget, a $5.5 billion package for business which is aimed to encourage entrepreneurship, growth and the creation of jobs. Small Business, being entities that that have an annual turnover of less than $2 million, make up 90 percent of incorporated business and have been the winners in the 2015 Budget. 

Farmers are relieved by the Federal Government’s decision to bring forward the start date for new farm tax breaks.  

In a recent appeal to the Family Court, it was determined that there is no binding rule for determining “special contributions” to a relationship. The Court decided that a wealthy couple should share their assets equally, despite the husband claiming that his special skills meant that he should have 70% of the assets.