If you have a farm, a business, or are self-employed, we can provide some tax relief and help you manage your business tax following an adverse or emergency event.
The following matters are complex, and we recommend you discuss them with a tax advisor if possible.
Unable to file or pay your tax on time during an adverse or emergency event
We understand you may be unable to file or pay your tax on time and we have ways to help you. This includes helping companies, partnerships and trusts to apply for financial relief.
Unable to file or pay your tax on time - adverse or emergency event
Lost or damaged business records
We will not penalise you for incomplete or missing records if you’ve made a reasonable attempt to reconstruct them, in a reasonable timeframe. See this page for ways to retrieve or reconstruct records.
Lost, destroyed or damaged records
How your tax might be affected following an adverse or emergency event
If you have been affected by an adverse or emergency event, your income may have changed. It may decrease due to impacts on your business, or increase if you receive a grant or subsidy. This can have implications for your tax, but we may be able to help.
Provisional tax
If you think your annual income is going to drop, you can choose to estimate your provisional tax for the year. This will reduce the provisional tax you have to pay. You may even get back some of the provisional tax you’ve already paid. Find out more about estimating your provisional tax.
Grants and relief payments and how they are taxed
You may be receiving a grant or subsidy for your business as a result of an adverse or emergency event. You’ll need to think about how this affects your tax.
How we tax these payments depends on where they came from and the purpose of the grant. There are differences between grants from central and local authorities, and grants from non-government sources.
For more information on the different types of grants and subsidies and how they are taxed, go to this page.
Loans and how they are taxed
If you use borrowed money to help your business recover from an adverse or emergency event, any interest you pay on the loan is tax deductible.
If you have repayments for your Small Business Cashflow loan that you will not be able to meet because of an adverse event, you will need to contact us about your repayment schedule.
Repaying the Small Business Cashflow Scheme (SBCS) loan
Income equalisation scheme for farmers and growers
If you have money deposited in the Income Equalisation Scheme, and you own a farming, fishing or forestry business, you may be able to:
- withdraw funds early from the scheme
- deposit funds into the scheme later than the usually allowed date.
If you’ve been affected by an adverse or emergency event, check if this applies on this page.
List of events where we offer extra help
How income equalisation schemes work
Contact us
If you need to talk to us, we have several options.
Natural disasters, adverse and emergency events - contact us
You can also get in contact with a tax agent for professional advice (for example, an accountant, bookkeeper, or lawyer).
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