The Federal Government has unveiled May Budget.

The latest Federal Budget has been handed down, the third by the current Government.

Please note, these are just announcements at this stage. These measures have not been passed by parliament and they may be substantially changed before being passed, or may never be passed at all.

There was very little on the tax front in the budget.

For businesses, the current $20,000 instant asset write-off threshold, which was set to expire on 30^th June 2024, has been extended to 30^th June 2025.

The annual indexation of HELP debts will now be at the lower of the CPI or Wage Price Index, and this will be backdated to 1^st June 2023. The indexation that occurred on 1^st June 2023 was 7.1%, which will now be adjusted down to 3.2%. The June 2024 indexation is estimated to be around 4%.

There will be a strengthening of the foreign resident capital gains tax regime. More details on this will hopefully be provided in the near future.

There were also some changes to affect very specific industries which we won’t go into further detail on here (Critical Mineral Production Tax Incentive, Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive, Film Producer Tax Offset).

The key upcoming tax change has already been legislated and was not part of this budget.

The stage three tax cuts to apply from 1^st July 2024 are as follows: