Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, , 2:44:29 to 2:47:04
Examination of the three-year rollover relief period and the practical difficulties farmers face when attempting to split primary and non-primary production assets.
Topics: Agricultural productivity, Efficiency dividend
Speakers: Hon Matthew Canavan, Matt Lowe, Chris Toyne, Unknown Speaker
>> Sure. Well, this is if you can't understand it, how can a farmer understand it? That's that's the problem here. I mean, people have got busy lives, right? They're trying to do their best to provide for their families and we're just creating totally unnecessary stress for them. As I say, it wasn't even taken to an election. They weren't even asked uh their views on it. Uh it's uh what happens then? I mean, you you take some of the typical examples I'm told about here, uh, say a a farmer owns a a harvester that they use on their own farm, but then they contract out to to other farms as well. That that off-farm income, so to speak, or the income they earn from other farmers is typically not treated as prime production income, but the asset is generates both primary production income and non-primal production income. Where does that tractor go in this split?
>> Yeah, look, as uh Mr. Low said, we're sort of getting to the edge of our uh um Bailey week, I suppose. And and I'd note again that the the individual uh application of uh the the tax changes to individual businesses depend upon the circumstances of each business. So, it's sort of difficult for me to generalize um on on what the impacts would be. Um
that >> that's a pretty simple it's not hard to understand that example and it is one of the sort of things that is typically brought up to me. So what do I tell my constituents who bring this to me? What Where does that tractor go?
>> So I think I I think um we we are eager to be of assistance senator. It's it's it is a matter of detail that um is challenging for us to comment on. Um and [clears throat] I appreciate the spirit in which you're coming to it. The only thing I would say is um well in addition to these these are matters that um uh would be best raised with treasury is that there is a period for farmers to consider I guess their options in relation to kind of whether they choose to roll over or not and there is a rollover relief period available as well for 3 years to restructure out of discretionary trusts uh and allowing assets to be transferred without triggering a CGT liability. Um, so it's not like farmers have to sort this out to tomorrow either or kind of at what when whenever point sort of the discretionary trust changes come into effect after they've gone through the process of parliament from which you're