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If you are changing, pausing, closing, selling or winding up a business, you should:
- Check whether your state or territory government has any special requirements.
- Check you have met all lodgment, reporting and payment obligations with any government agencies you have dealt with.
- Work with your tax adviser or an insolvency practitioner early on to minimise risk for your exit strategy or succession plan, and see what you need to do from a tax and super perspective, including
- seeking advice from a registered professional, particularly if you may need to wind up your company
- being wary of advisers who encourage you to engage in inappropriate or even illegal activity, such as illegal phoenix activity.
- Check and update authorisations for your business in Relationship Authorisation Manager and permissions for your staff in Access Manager.
- Check whether you need to pay goods and services tax (GST) or capital gains tax (CGT) on business assets you sell and cancel your GST registration.
- Work out and pay final pay and entitlements to your workers.
- Lodge final returns and reports and pay final PAYG instalments, tax and loans.
- Keep business records of all transactions (including records related to selling or closing your business) for at least 5 years.
If you registered a business but haven’t started #
If you have registered a business but didn’t start the business, and have now decided that you will not operate, you must cancel your ABN.
If you have started a business and have made a loss, you need to lodge a tax return before you cancel your ABN.
