Owen Raskovich

There's the old finance joke that you go to an event and the person who's standing on stage says, who wants to pay more tax?

And only one person in the crowd puts their hand up and says, I do.

And that person is the one who's the smart one in the room because if you pay more tax, it means you're earning more.

But at the same time, we can do things to, I guess, make our lives just a little bit better.

and i would encourage all of you to get a good accountant on your side someone you can ask questions of or even just a family friend who knows things or best of all learn about it learn about the tax rules that apply to you learn about the different tax structures companies trusts individual sole traders if you need an abn if you need an acn all these different things this is especially important if you're a business or contract or a gig economy worker but all these things matter

The second one, the second type of tax that most people come into is capital gains tax, CGT as it's known in the industry.

CGT is another type of tax that most individuals pay.

I won't go into the details because accountants are paid for this, not me, and basically it's selling something or an asset for more than you bought it for, basically.

There are many rules and finer details around that, but that's the basics of it.

And what it ultimately means, at least in my eyes, is traders, so day traders, like people who trade things or people who flip things, so property investors who say, I'm going to flip this house for a 50 grand profit.

What it means is if you are more active...

You tend to pay more capital gains tax because you're constantly buying and selling.

But then a neat feature of the Australian tax law, at least for residents, to my understanding, is that

If you hold an investment for more than a year, again, you've got to check what type of investment it is, there can be tax benefits because you might not have to pay the full amount of capital gains tax.

That's all I'll say on this topic, but those are the two that kind of stand out to me.

Another one which is obvious is the Medicare levy surcharge, and I've said surcharge because it's different to the normal Medicare levy.

There are two different things.

And how that impacts with private health insurance is something that you need to know.

Anyway, I'm getting caught up in these things, but we all love tax.

One former business tycoon said, if anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax, they want their head read.