A few weeks back, ABL and Tax Assure started doing regular spots on SEN as part of a new series, the Business Solutions Playbook. Featuring ABL Managing Director Steve Heavey and Tax Assure CEO Olga Koskie, these short segments cover real questions, with no script beyond a rough list of what they wanted to cover.
Why they’re doing this
Olga deals with tax debt every day. Steve deals with funding solutions for businesses that need cash fast. Between the two of them, they cover a lot of the situations that come up when a business is under pressure and needs a way through.
Most business owners find out how ATO debt escalates the hard way. A payment plan defaults because a BAS came in late. A director penalty notice sits in a drawer. A credit report gets flagged and the fuel cards stop working overnight. None of that happens because someone’s a bad operator. It happens because nobody explained the mechanics before it mattered.
If a client’s sitting on tax debt and hasn’t been told there’s a payment plan option, or that asset-based lending exists as a way to buy time, that’s worth raising early. It’s a lot easier to fix at “I’ve got a letter” than at “the fuel cards stopped.”
What we’ve covered so far
- Why an existing payment plan defaults the moment a BAS is paid late, and what to do about it
- What a director penalty notice actually means for a director personally
- Why “just do a deal with the ATO” pub talk doesn’t work, and what actually does
- How equity in an asset already owned, whether that’s a truck, an excavator, or something sitting unencumbered, can bridge the gap without going anywhere near the ATO
People assume if they’ve got tax debt, nobody will lend to them. That’s not how it works. If there’s an asset with equity in it, we don’t care what it’s attached to.
Watch the clips
On director penalty notices
What a director penalty notice actually means, and why ignoring one in the drawer is the worst move a director can make.
Pub talk: why the advice from the bar doesn’t hold up
Olga on the myth she hears constantly: that you can just offer the ATO a fraction of what’s owed and call it settled. The reality is a properly negotiated payment plan, built around what the business can actually sustain, not a number pulled out of the air.
When you need a solution and can’t access traditional finance
Steve on how ABL lets businesses draw down on equity in assets they already own, for the businesses that don’t have access to cash through the traditional channels.
On personal liability
A director of a company can be personally liable for the company’s tax debt. That’s the part people miss, and the reason a company debt can’t just be ignored.
The loan that buys time, not trouble
Tax debt forces quick decisions. There’s a better option most people don’t know about: using an asset already owned to buy time, without digging a deeper hole.
Got a client sitting on tax debt with an asset they haven’t thought to use?
If they own something outright, whether it’s a truck, equipment, or anything unencumbered, we can tell you how much it releases in under two hours. And if it’s the tax debt itself that needs sorting, whether that’s an ATO payment plan that isn’t working or debt that hasn’t been addressed at all, our partner Tax Assure are Australia’s leading tax debt specialists.