Читать книгу 101 Ways to Save Money on Your Tax - Legally! 2022-2023 - Adrian Raftery - Страница 21

Income splitting is a legitimate tax-planning tool and one of the easiest strategies to implement. There are a few simple strategies for you to follow and they all mainly revolve around the marginal tax rates for yourself and your spouse, both now and in the future. The tax rates for individuals, not including the Medicare and other levies, are shown in table 1.1.

The goal is to try to level the income of couples so that they are paying tax at the same marginal rate. While income from personal exertion (such as your salary) cannot be transferred to the other partner, there is scope to have passive income from investments transferred if the assets are held in the lower-earning spouse's name.

TABLE 1.1: tax rates for individuals excluding levies (2022–23)

Source: © Australian Taxation Office for the Commonwealth of Australia.

Taxable income	Tax on this income
0–$18 200	Nil
$18 201–$45 000	19c for each $1 over $18 200
$45 001–$120 000	$5092 plus 32.5c for each $1 over $45 000
$120 001–$180 000	$29 467 plus 37c for each $1 over $120 000
$180 001 and over	$51 667 plus 45c for each $1 over $180 000

It amazes me how many smart business people are really dumb when it comes to reducing tax. Too often I see rich business people paying the highest tax rate (47 per cent including medicare levy) on interest or dividend income while their spouses don't fully use their $18 200 tax-free threshold. With the $1.7 million transfer balance cap on superannuation, there is an opportunity to split superannuation contributions between spouses such that each spouse maximises their respective $1.7 million thresholds before they retire.