Life and Taxes: A Look at Life Through Tax

Over the course of an average life, most of us will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax. We’ll pay tax on what we earn and spend, and we’ll mostly do that without even noticing. There can be no other economic transaction where we pay so little attention to how much we’re paying and why.

This is a life-centric book, not a tax-centric one. The aim is to discuss how tax impacts upon life, not to look at tax as an academic subject, detached from everyday life and events. It takes you through a typical life, identifying what the tax effects are of those key events which most – or all – of us will go through.

There are plenty of other tax books out there which allow tax practitioners to fossick in the undergrowth of detailed tax law; this book has a different purpose. Quite simply, if you are sitting with a client listening to their life story, or if you are that client, and you want a handy summary of exactly what you (or the client) needs to know, this is the book for you.

KEY FEATURES

• Written for the non-tax professional 
• Relevant to small businesses and individuals
• Focuses on key life events and their tax effects, including:
  –    Getting your first job
  –    Starting and growing a business
  –    Getting married, buying a house, having children, marriage breakdown
  –    Investing
  –    Superannuation, retirement, succession and estate planning.
• Tax concepts explained in everyday language