Change business ownership

When you change business ownership you’ll need to pay any outstanding bills, such as water and electricity. You’ll also have tax payment and reporting obligations to take care of.

You may need to:

• pay any outstanding employee entitlements
• lodge and pay any outstanding business activity statements and instalment notices
• lodge final tax returns – consider whether capital gains tax is applicable on the sale of your business and any property or other assets involved
• cancel tax registrations such as pay as you go (PAYG) witholding and goods and services tax (GST) – if your business was sold as a going concern this can affect the amount of your GST on the sale.

When you make changes to your business, you need to tell all the stakeholders in your business as well as other relevant organisations and government agencies.

Your accountant and solicitor may be able to provide additional recommendations to ensure the smooth change of ownership of your business.

You may need to transfer your leases, permits and licences to the new business owner.

Keep in mind that transfers can take up to 12 months. It’s important to plan for these transfers early in the process to ensure you have plenty of time.

If you’re selling your business, remember that you’re still responsible for any agreements and obligations for your business until the transfers are complete.

Different leases have different conditions regarding transfer of ownership. Make sure you understand the conditions of your lease agreements before you transfer them to the new owner.

Key assets and records to transfer to the new owner include:

• marketing assets, such as domain names and web registrations
• intellectual property
• business records, such as customer, employee, legal and financial records.

If you're selling your business or transferring it to a family member you’ll need to:

• cancel your ABN – you cannot transfer an ABN and the new business owner will have their own
• transfer or cancel your business name.

If you're adding a new partner or a partner leaves, you may be able to keep the same ABN. Under certain conditions you’ll just need to update your ABN details. Otherwise you’ll need to cancel your ABN and can reapply for a new one. Find out more about changing a partnership.

Before you cancel your ABN, make sure you’ve met any lodgment, reporting and payment obligations with government agencies you deal with. If you also want to cancel your pay as you go withholding, you must cancel it before your ABN.

Cancelling an ABN will cancel registrations for GST, luxury car tax , wine equalisation tax and fuel tax credits. You can learn more about cancelling registrations.

If new partners are joining your business, make sure you update your business registrations and partnership details.

If your business partners are changing, check you:

• update your partner details (and remove any partners that are leaving) on the business name register
• apply for a new ABN or add the details of new partners to the existing ABN registration
• sign a partnership agreement to set out the terms and conditions
• update your details with the ATO for tax purposes.