The Australian Taxation Office has released a range of assets to support property investors. 

We learnt that the ATO now allows the varying of your PAYG instalment. What it means is that this allows taxpayers experiencing financial difficulty as a result of COVID-19, the added benefit and flexibility to manage their instalments to suit their circumstances.  For a detailed report, it can be found here.

In addition, the ATO has advised that some reports of delays are being experienced in issuing clearance certificates for the foreign resident capital gains withholding obligations. The Legislative Instrument for foreign resident capital gains withholding (FRCGW) has removed the need to apply to the Commission for a variation in certain circumstances where a mortgagee is an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) under Sec 5 of the Banking Act 1959. What this means is no withholding is required for an acquisition of land where:

• the mortgagee exercises a power of sale
• the residue is zero or less than zero
• the mortgagee provides a written declaration to the transferee that the amount to withhold is varied to nil under the instrument.

Read more about FRCGW and mortgagee arrangements here.