Financial Services in Fortitude Valley, QLD - page 5

Genuinely the worse financial decision of my life was engaging with this business. I engaged them in mid 2021 having very large gains and wanting to sell and just seeking advice on tax compliance. They strongly recommended a complex and expensive option called a “private ruling” which is effectively a legal challenge to the ATO, they estimated it would take “3-6 months” but did specify they cannot guarantee any timeframe. I was quite naive at the time and trusted that advice. 2 years and about $90,000 in fees paid to them later we received a decision from the ATO that changed almost nothing from what the tax situation would have been originally. In the five years since and mostly because of this experience I’ve learnt a lot about capital gains tax in Australia. I now know enough to understand and have also been told by other tax professionals how terrible of a decision I made then and that the only beneficiary of it was always going to be the accountants and lawyers I had to pay.