offering concessional tax treatment<\/a> to investors.<\/p>\nStartups only qualify if they\u2019re under three years old and have expenditure of $1 million or less with assessable income up to $200,000 in the past income year.<\/p>\n
Peak advocacy body StartupAUS has been a major player in driving such reforms.<\/p>\n
At a special board meeting in 2015, StartupAUS presented a range of recommendations to federal minister for industry, innovation and science Christopher Pyne, with tax incentives to encourage investment in early-stage startups topping their priority list.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new tax incentives will allow innovative, high-growth Australian companies to grow and scale locally and the flow-on effects will be substantial,\u201d McCauley says.<\/p>\n
By boosting the volume and diversity of seed investment, he says the incentives will create a more sophisticated and experienced pool of Australian angel investors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich will in turn lead to a proliferation of experienced mentors for startups,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Other leaders in the startup space have also welcomed the bill.<\/p>\n
Prominent investor and Shark Tank<\/em> judge Steve Baxter says it\u2019s a good move for the sector despite it only applying to a narrow band of startups.<\/p>\n\u201cI was very happy with their definition of the companies that qualify, there\u2019s a real problem if they got that wrong,\u201d Baxter tells StartupSmart.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cThere was not a very long period from the consultations to the release of the actual legislation so I can see areas they have moved on that were reacted to quite adversely.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he says he would’ve liked the bill to be open to a wider range of investors as he believes if people want to support early stage businesses, it shouldn\u2019t matter where the money comes from.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that it\u2019s not fully open to non-high net worth individuals or non-sophisticated investors, or the 708 provisions of the corporations act effectively is disappointing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
But the incentives should help to grow the ecosystem, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s the most generous in the world but I think it\u2019s a bloody good step to support businesses that are going to be the linchpin of the future,” Baxter says.<\/p>\n
Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter,<\/em> LinkedIn<\/em> and<\/em> Soundcloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"StartupAUS CEO Alex McCauley The government’s recently revealed startup tax incentives could be the “most generous in the world”, StartupAUS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}