Tax Talks Podcast: When your business can’t pay its bills

Estimated reading time: 1 minute Business survival

Recently I was interviewed by Heide Robson, a professional accountant and the founder of the Tax Talk Podcast (www.taxtalks.com.au) about business insolvency in Australia.

Sewell & Kettle & Tax Talks podcast

When your business can’t pay its bills

What I’ve done is broken the answer down into 19 questions that I go through in this interview. 

At the start of my career in the early 2000s small to medium sized enterprise (SME) directors really only had one option – their accountant recommended an immediate voluntary administration when a business became insolvent. Since then we have the safe harbour from insolvent trading commencing in 2017, small business restructuring commencing in 2021 and a long term move away from voluntary administration. And also there is the prepack insolvency arrangement – it isn’t yet universally accepted but it is practically accepted anyway.  

So you now have 4 options for an insolvent SME to undertake a restructure:

  1. Voluntary Administration
  2. Small Business Restructuring Process 
  3. Safe harbour from insolvent trading 
  4. Pre-pack insolvency arrangement 

With the permission of the Tax Talks Podcast, the interview can be accessed at the following links:

Part 1

Part 2

Others

Breach of trust - corporate trustee breaches duties

Breach of Trust: Definition and Recent Case Law

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

In a trust, a trustee has strict obligations to beneficiaries. These are either set out in the trust deed, or apply via operation of law. Where a trustee does not act in accordance with those obligations there is a ‘breach of trust’. Here we take a deep dive into the concept of a breach of trust, and examine some recent case law.