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Have you ever wondered about the best ways to protect you and your business? In this series, we’ll look at the keyways to use trusts, insurance and risk-management techniques to protect both your personal assets and the future of your business. In this article, we’ll look at how you can use a trust to shelter your assets.

There are certain items of equipment, machinery and hardware that are essential to the operation of your business – whether it’s the delivery van you use to run your home-delivery food service, or the high-end digital printer to run your print business. But when a critical business asset is required, should you buy this item outright, or should you lease the item and pay for it in handy monthly instalments?

If you are a landlord, make sure you know about the new pet rules for tenants. From 1 December 2025, tenants are permitted to keep pets and landlords must agree.

Most businesses will give to employees, clients and often charities at Christmas time. From morning teas to elaborate Christmas functions, from cards and calendars to hampers and the latest gadgets, Christmas is a season of giving.

If you had to pay tax of more than $5,000 in your last income tax return, you may have to pay provisional tax for the following year. Provisional tax is like making progress payments on next year's income tax.

This time of year can be hard on small business. Your expenses continue and your cashflow can suffer when your debtors go on holiday.

Inflation may be down but there’s still real uncertainty for business owners.

There were some key takeouts of interest to many of our clients from the recently signed coalition agreements between National, ACT and New Zealand First and the formation of the new Government. In particular there are a number of policies which will likely benefit landlord clients who own residential rentals. I have summarised some of these below. 1. Return of Interest deductibility for residential rental properties Interest deductibility for residential rental property owners will return. It will be phased back in over three tax years: • 2023/24 tax year: 60% of interest cost will be deductible. • 2024/25 tax year: 80% of interest cost will be deductible. • 2025/26 tax year: 100% of interest cost will be deductible. 2. Reduction in bright-line period National signalled in their pre-election campaign that the bright-line period for residential rental property sales would reduce from 10-years to 2-years. While the exact implementation of this policy is not yet known, it is good news on the horizon for residential property investors. 3. Reinstatement of 90-day no-cause termination notices The new government will reinstate 90-day no-cause tenancy termination notices. This will avoid many unnecessary disputes in the Tenancy Tribunal and gives landlords more confidence in letting to possibly “marginal tenants". Many landlords have avoided what they considered to be risky tenants because eviction for anti-social behaviour was so difficult. With this reinstatement, landlords might be more inclined to give a marginal tenant a chance because they know that if the tenant misbehaves, they won’t be stuck with them. If you would like more information on how these changes might affect your personal circumstances, please feel free to contact us to discuss further.

Sole traders have had an especially difficult few years as inflation surges. We have got three tips to help lighten the load for your sole trader business.