Lance Cunningham

Lance is the tax technical leader for the BDO Australia Tax Practice and head of the National Tax Support Team, which is responsible for:

• Tax interpretation and research
• Coordination of BDO tax seminars, conferences and other tax training papers and other tax training materials
• Submissions and other liaison with Federal Treasury, Australian Taxation Office, Board of Taxation etc.
• Liaison with media on tax related issues
• The preparation of client tax up-dates and bulletins.

In addition, Lance conducts quality assurance reviews for the BDO Australia firms and other BDO International member firms and does concurring reviews of significant tax consulting assignments conducted by the BDO Australia Tax Partners.

Lance has over 30 years of professional tax consulting experience with BDO and other large accounting firms. Prior to that Lance worked at the Australian Taxation Office in appeals, tax audit and other tax technical areas.

Sectors

Lance has expertise in a wide range of tax related issues covering various industries including:

• Manufacturing
• Professional services firms
• Wholesale
• Import/export
• Retail
• Mining
• Non-profit organisations
• Transnational groups and
• Taxation advice for smaller accounting firms

Expertise

• Corporate tax issues - including tax consolidation, dividend imputation, capital restructures, dividend stripping, debt / equity issues, capital benefits and private company loans
• Capital Gains Tax (CGT)- including CGT on intangible assets, treatment of options and shares, value shifting rules, loss integrity rules, small business CGT concessions, and CGT rollovers including scrip for scrip and demerger relief
• Tax Integrity provisions including Part IVA, Thin Capitalisation, Value shifting and OECD BEPS issues
• Foreign sourced income -  including CFC, transferor trusts and foreign tax offset inbound tax issues for non-residents investing in Australia
• Business structures - including structuring and restructuring of professional practices, retail, construction and manufacturing
• Employee share schemes
• Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT)
• Trusts - including discretionary trusts, deceased estates, service trusts and corporate beneficiaries

Qualifications

• Master of Taxation degree from University of NSW
• Charted Tax Adviser

Affiliations

• Fellow of The Taxation Institute
• Fellow of the Institute of Public Accountants