Set and Forget Is Expensive: Why Your Business Structure Deserves the Same Energy as Your Growth
In September we published Does Your Business Structure Still Fit? — a plain check for regional business owners. On the same day, Treasury released draft legislation for the proposed minimum tax on discretionary trusts. We’ve since updated that article with what’s changed.
The timing says something bigger than any single proposal. A business structure isn’t a one-off decision. It sits in the middle of a business that keeps changing, a family that keeps changing, and a set of rules that keeps changing too.
The Old Way: Set it and Forget it
For most business owners, structure gets decided once. Usually at start-up, usually under time pressure, and usually on the best advice available for the business as it looked on day one. Then it gets filed away.
That isn’t a criticism. When you’re starting out, the energy goes where it should — into getting the business off the ground. The problem is what happens next. The business grows, takes on staff, buys equipment, maybe brings in a partner or starts thinking about the next generation. The structure underneath it stays exactly where it was.
It usually only gets looked at again when something forces the question: a sale, a dispute, a
lender’s requirement, an ATO letter. By then the options are narrower, and the decisions are rushed.
The New Way: Structure as a live part of your wealth strategy
The alternative isn’t constant restructuring. For most of the businesses we work with, the existing structure is still the right one. The difference is that it gets checked — calmly, on purpose, before it’s urgent.
A useful comparison is a boundary fence on a property. Nobody builds one and never walks it again. Posts shift, wire sags, gates get left open. Walking the fence line isn’t a sign something is wrong; it’s how you make sure nothing goes wrong. Your structure is the fence around everything you’ve built.
In practice, that means looking at your structure whenever something material changes:
• Revenue, risk or staff numbers have grown since the structure was set up
• You’ve bought significant assets — property, machinery, investments
• A partner is coming in, or someone is stepping back
• Succession, retirement or sale is on the horizon
• The rules affecting your structure have changed, or are proposed to
Why Protection Deserves the Same Energy as Growth
Most business owners pour their energy into growth — the next goal, the next market, the next hire. That’s where the excitement lives. Protection and compliance tend to get whatever is left over, often once a year at tax time.
But they don’t become less important because they’re less exciting. Your structure decides how much personal liability you carry, how the business is taxed, and how much flexibility you have when it comes to bringing someone in, selling, or passing the business on. If it isn’t working as hard as you are, it can quietly cost you what you’ve built.
That’s the thinking behind the next six months of our content: build it hard, protect it harder.
What’s Changed since September
Draft legislation for the proposed 30% minimum tax on discretionary trusts has now been released, and the public consultation period has closed. The key change from the Budget announcement is a proposed election that could let existing discretionary trusts stay outside the minimum tax, subject to strict conditions.
It is still proposed, not yet law, and the details may change. We’ll unpack what it means for family businesses in November. If a trust is part of your structure, that’s a good reason to have the conversation now rather than later.
Where to Start
If you’d like a plain-English starting point, download our free Entity Structure Guide.
And if you’d rather just talk it through, get in touch — there’s no obligation, and it’s exactly the kind of conversation that should happen before it’s urgent, not after.
Author of the Post:
Justin Maddock
Justin Maddock is a Chartered Accountant and CPA with more than 20 years’ experience in public practice.
Accounting Services Australia
