CGT concessions available to small businesses

Businesses receive four different types of concessions on top of CGT exemptions and rollovers which are available to everyone. These allow businesses to disregard or defer some or all of the capital gains from an active asset which is used in the business.

The four additional concessions include:

• 15-year exemption: If the business has owned an asset for 15 consecutive years and you are 55 years or over and are retiring or permanently incapacitated, then the capital gain won’t be assessable when you sell the asset.
• 50% active asset reduction: Being a small business, ATO permits reduction of the capital gain on an active asset by 50%. This is in addition to the 50% CGT discount if ownership of the asset extends over a year.
• Retirement exemption: Capital gains incurred from the sale of active assets are exempt up to a lifetime limit of $500,000. However, you must pay the exempt amount into an appropriate super fund or retirement savings account if you are under 55 years of age.
• Rollover: You may defer all or part of a capital gain for two years upon selling an active asset. Your deferral period can be longer than two years if you acquire a replacement asset or incur expenditure on making capital improvements to an existing asset.

Note that these concessions are only available upon disposal of an active asset and either of the following:

• Small business with an aggregated annual turnover of less than $2 million
• Asset used in closely connected small business
• Net assets have a value of no more than $6 million (this excludes personal assets e.g home, as long as these have not been used to produce income)

There are also other criteria and conditions that the business will need to meet but you can apply to as many concessions that are applicable to you. Importantly, you can only apply to these in a certain order so be wary of this.