Tax Incentive Program

In week 5 we provide a matix comparing the available programs, their benefits and disadvantages.

Here we discuss the Venture Capital program, which has not historically been considered a direct investor incentive program although one program offers the greatest incentives complete tax exemption on investment returns, but actually fall under the umberella of “Tax benefits and support to stimulate the early stage venture capital sector” not the Australian SME sector of Australian SME investors.

Last week we covered the R&D Tax Incentive Scheme and the fact that it is not a direct investor incentive, has significant drawbacks, but is the most siginificant of the incentive programs, by volume of dollar benefits claimed.

This week we discuss what has historically been the only direct investor incentive, the Angel Investment Tax Incentive Scheme.

Although the R&DTI scheme is for incentivising the investment by the venture into further research and development, it is necessary to overview this scheme because a venture’s ability to tap into the R&DTI may be crucial to the cashflow in that venture, and therefore of great significance to investors.

Our focus here is on the Federal Government incentive schemes supporting SME funding needs.

It has never been enough to merely create a volume of programs and schemes claiming to provide SME funding support.