Standard Ledger

Most Australian founders who push into the US want the same thing: keep building and owning the technology in Australia, keep claiming the R&D Tax Incentive on that work, and sell into the US on top. That’s entirely doable. But it’s easy to structure an expansion, and a Delaware flip in particular, in a way that quietly breaks the incentive, and the ATO is actively lookin...

The cheapest and fastest way to get someone working for you in the US is to engage them as a contractor. Your Australian company can do this directly, with no US entity and no US payroll setup. They invoice you, they handle their own US taxes, and you keep a contractor agreement on file. It’s a perfectly legitimate way to start.

But there are three traps, and the th...

Most founders hold their startup shares in a discretionary trust set up at incorporation, for flexibility on distribution and exit as well as asset protection. If you’re now incorporating a new company in the United States – typically a Delaware C corp – the question becomes which entity should hold the shares: you personally, your discretionary family trust, or an Australian...

There’s a story doing the rounds in startup land right now. AI inference costs are high today, but they’re falling fast – so build through the difficult early period, lock in your customers, and margin expansion will follow almost automatically as the cost curve drops.

It’s a reasonable bet. It’s not a guaranteed one. And most founders aren’t modelling what happens ...

Most founders know the headline rate. If your company has under $20 million in aggregated turnover and you’re in a tax loss position, the R&D Tax Incentive refunds 43.5% of your eligible R&D spend as cash. So the logic seems obvious: spend more on R&D, get more back.

Except it doesn’t always work that way. There’s a mechanical limit that catches a lot of...