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hey guys it's Greg from all accounts today I want to talk about the most common structures for small businesses in Australia so let's get started the first one is the sole Trader structure so basically it's when you're trading as a business in your personal name so the advantages here are you don't need to prepare a separate tax return which is easy the registration approaches is uh is cost effective in fact there's no cost you can just complete the ABN Australian business number registration yourself the disadvantages here you obviously can't go into business as a sole Trader with someone else so that's uh that won't work here the tax rate can be varied so it can be anywhere from zero to 47 which uh depending on how much money you make is is not going to be a good strategy another uh big disadvantage is uh the if your business fails your personal assets can be uh taken by your creditors so you're personally liable for those so if you are real estate or you know Investments so you may be um this structure may not be right for you but once again it's a great uh structure if you're looking to start a business there's also a small business restructure that you can apply later on if you plan on moving a business to a different structure effectively tax-free we highly recommend speaking into account before you do that we have personally seen many situations where people do that themselves and there's a severe tax consequences as a result so the next Russia we'll talk about is the partnership so in this situation commonly you've got two individuals um you know husband wife you know two friends um they work in the business uh together so they form a partnership which is just an agreement so you'll have to register a ABN for the partnership we recommend having a partnership agreement you know speak to a lawyer especially if they are unrelated party you want to make sure that you are in the event of a dispute know what you can and can't do so one of the advantages here you're able to split the profit usually say there's two partners it's going to be 50 50 equally another common situation uh that uh this is a great structure for is where you've got one partner that actually works in the business and then say the other partner is the they finance the business and this guy works in the business so within your agreement you can specify the salary that the partner want gets so you're able to sort of split the the um the earnings from your partnership with relative ease so the main disadvantage here is uh there's an additional cost because you've got another tax return it's not a big deal I think but the big thing is that uh you know the individuals or the partners are personally liable for the debts of the business so once again if you've got lots of personal assets usually you uh want to be careful with that uh Partnerships can also be not only for individuals but you could have two companies but once again these are the most common structures usually it's two friends or husband wife sort of thing uh the next most common structure is the company structure so in this situation you've got the company and it controls and runs this business and is controlled by the uh the director here in this situation uh when it makes money it pays it out as a dividend usually to the director which is also the shareholder so uh so clearly there's a there's a potential issue there is that all the profit goes into one person tax return which may not be favorable the main advantage here though is the limited liability so this company makes a mistake uh the director and the shareholders all their personalized is safe the director though can be potentially liable for the deaths of the business if they don't mean the obligations as a director the most common one is making sure this company is solvent at all times if it's not you need to close it down right away so in this situation you also have an additional fee you've got to pay every year to Asic the regulator so it's about 300 a year the fees to set up a company uh is usually about five six hundred dollars uh the filing fee for Asic to register the company okay so now we'll go on to the uh the last two most common structures and they involve a trust okay so the first one is where you have a trust in the uh with a company trustee so in this situation their business is owned by a trust trust is basically an agreement an arrangement between two different parties so you've got the trustee in this situation the company controls the trust that's the trustee then they do that for the benefit of these beneficiaries which is usually yourself down here so what happens is the business is run by this company the trust makes the profit from the business and then it allocates out the income to your beneficiaries which are usually yourself and your family uh just like before the company also has a director that controls this company so the main advantage here is the profit can be allocated uh as you see fit so the director could get you know 50k you know the spouse gets 20K and you know 100 each something like that for the children so you can allocate it uh on a year by year basis so there's a lot of flexible planning involved with with that which is great another benefit is that the trust if it earns different types of income so you've got you know business income interest uh capital gains so capital gains is the most common one where there's concessions you can apply so the Trust basically pass passes through the income in its same characteristics which means the beneficiaries here when they receive it can apply those concessions which you'll see in the next scenario you uh you can't do that so that's another sort of big uh a great reason to have uh your business owned by this trust so cost wise the trust here will have a tax return the company because it's not making any money it doesn't have a tax return so it's just like before just set up fee for the company the fees to set up a trust can be anywhere from sort of 200 to a thousand dollars or more depending on if you have specific needs that you want around your trust but sort of standard trust can be sort of five six hundred dollars the uh the director once again is controlling this company so just make sure that you're meeting those obligations because the company is responsible if the trust fails so in that situation you know everybody's safe here as long as the company is solvent and the trust is actually solvent as well okay so the next structure that's quite common is where you have a company but the shareholder is a is the trust so in this situation the company has the business so it's making all the money and then it um when the when the profit is made by the company and it's drawn to the shareholders or you know the owners they want to take the money from the company uh it all gets basically uh washed down into one type of income called dividend so like I mentioned before it doesn't stay the same type of income as what it was earned it basically gets all turned into a just a dividend so it's only one type of income where there's no concessions it just it's just a dividend so in this situation you uh the dividend will go to the trust and then you can then split it to the beneficial so you know half the dividend can go to the director half of the dividend can go to the other spouse so you have that discretion on a year by year basis so it's it's still a great structure regardless uh the the uh the companies once again controlled by the director so making sure you're making sure this company is solvent at all times one of the disadvantages with this structure is that obviously the uh whatever profit the company makes it becomes a dividend it won't stay say a capital gain but uh you can retain you technically can retain the profit in the company if you don't draw it but the reality is with small businesses if it makes say a profit a hundred thousand in the company or in your business you're going to want to take that money to fund your expenses so effectively the concessional tax rate or the the tax rate for the company doesn't matter because all of it will just come out and it'll be taxed in your own rate in your own name so it doesn't really matter what the company tax rate is I've actually done a separate video just to explain why that is the case however it is still a still a good strategy because you have the trust you're able to split the uh the dividend the profit on a year by year basis so yeah thanks for watching the video if you thought it was uh insightful you know give us a like or if you've got any questions leave a comment down below otherwise thanks for watching