my husband earns $110000 on investment income and we earn together in our super $70000 all before GST. (PASSIVE INCOME) what we need to know is can we register our goat hobby farm and claim some tax benefits, plus we wish to employ someone ( with experience) and want to know can we claim for the wages we pay them. thank you for your time Julie

I think the key word here is HOBBY.

if you have a hobby farm, then I suspect the enterprise is not large enough to warrant registering as a business.

but then again, maybe it does.......it depends on a range of factors as to whether you should be looking to apply losses in your PP enterprise against other assessable income.

there are a whole range of tests that apply to micro-businesses that prevent people applying losses in a hobby against other assessable income to obtain a tax advantage.....they are called Non-Commercial Loss Rules. check this out:

www.ato.gov.au/Business/Non-commercial-losses/

You may have other options to manage tax that dont involve trying to convince the ATO that Binky and Bonky the pet goats are a farm.......and this will probably involve getting face to face with your bean counter.....

what income do YOU earn???? if it is possible to get some of that investment income in YOUR tax return then there could be some significant tax savings to be had....however transferring investments may have tax consequences too.....

what about transferring some of the investments into super, and starting a tax-free income stream from that????

you have potentially LOTS of options, including the hobby farm game. Best thing to do is find a good CA or CPA to help you with some tax planning and see what options pop up.

good luck
BC