China wheat predictions and new rules for family trusts

It’s the final week of March, and the outlook for grain producers across the region continues to be one of promise as speculation of continued increases to wheat prices continue. While the Ukraine-Russia conflict looks to impact grain exports from the region across the longer term, there is now also murmurs of major problems with China’s winter crops. Although China produces on average 5.5 times the amount of wheat Australia does, to meet their consumption demand, they are willing buyers of Australian wheat. This bodes well for the continued demand for our wheat for the remainder of 2022 and into 2023.

Fertiliser and input costs continue to be a hot topic of discussion in agribusiness news. In the lead-up to this week’s federal budget, Grain Producers Australia have nominated policies that help farmers manage rising input costs and seasonal variability at the top of their wishlist.

Locally, CSBP Fertilisers have expanded their despatch capacity by up to 65% with the introduction of a new CSBP facility in Esperance. The new facility will streamline the collection process for Esperance growers, particularly across peak season.

South East Premium Wheatgrowers Association (SEPWA) held its annual Harvest Review and AGM last month, with 80 growers from the Esperance region coming together to celebrate and reflect on last year’s harvest and discuss opportunities for the season ahead.

Congratulations to Greg and Leonie Hard, who are handing over the reins of Esperance Rural Supplies to Elders. It’s an exciting time, not just for Greg and Leonie, who will be transitioning into retirement at their farm outside town, but also for growers across Esperance who will benefit from ERS having access to Elders’ national buying network, which should offer benefits to farmers from its stronger purchasing power.

Finally, if your agribusiness operates within a family trust structure, please be aware of new tax rulings which will impact how you can make trust distributions, and will likely increase your family group's tax liability going forward. Four new tax rulings have been released by the ATO to address taxpayers utilising adult-child beneficiaries of family trust to reduce their tax liability. The new rulings will limit a trustees ability to distribute trust income across family members with lower tax rates. If the ATO considers a trustee to be distributing income to an adult-child beneficiary for the purpose of tax reduction, the trustee will be taxed at the marginal rate of 47%. Furthermore, The ATO have stated that they can go back as far as the 2015 tax year to review trust distributions and apply the 47% tax rate for trust distributions where they believe the main aim was to reduce tax. This will impact how we complete your tax planning this year. If you haven't yet booked in for tax planning, please let me know.

Stay tuned for all things federal budget in next week’s edition.

Best wishes,