{"id":701593,"date":"2026-05-29T06:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701593\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T06:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:09:09","slug":"taylors-wines-considers-moving-sa-business-overseas-if-tax-changes-go-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/701593\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylors Wines considers moving SA business overseas if tax changes go through"},"content":{"rendered":"

A major South Australian winemaker is considering moving his business internationally in response to proposed tax changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The federal budget included a 30 per cent minimum tax on both discretionary trusts and capital gains.<\/p>\n

Third-generation winemaker Mitchell Taylor, from Taylors Wines in the Clare Valley, said if the changes came into effect, the business would “seriously have to consider” moving out of Australia.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Mitchell Taylor says industry leaders “can wake up having nightmares” about the level of uncertainty. (Supplied: Taylors Wines)<\/p>\n

“We’re already the highest taxed wine-producing country in the world,” Mr Taylor said.Future of farm trusts<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite winning a carve-out to changes to family trusts announced in the budget, farmers are still worried about what tax reform means for them.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got the 29 per cent [Wine Equalisation Tax] WET and then the GST on top of that. So we’ve effectively got a 42 per cent wholesale tax where no other industry has.”<\/p>\n

Mr Taylor said the business used trusts for asset protection and family support.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The reason we have these trusts is so that we can succeed, so that my grandfather could pass it on to my father, then I can pass on to the next generation,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I lost my dear sister at a young age and she had a very young family. Her dying wish was the business would look after her kids.<\/p>\n

“So, [we] set up a trust to look after another generation of the Taylor family.”<\/p>\n

With no end in sight to an industry crisis<\/a> led by extreme weather, an oversupply, and a shift in consumer preference, Mr Taylor expected other businesses would “look at their options” too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If we let all these tax changes go through, it will devastate our ability to be competitive, our ability to grow and our ability to invest and employ people in the great regions throughout Australia,” he said.<\/p>\n

Calls for change<\/p>\n

South Australia’s opposition minister for small and family business, Ben Hood, said the state government could increase the payroll tax threshold to help struggling businesses like those in the wine industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We would like to see the government looking to increase the threshold on payroll tax from $1.5 million to $2.1 million because it will be able to assist a lot of businesses here in South Australia,” Mr Hood said.<\/p>\n

“Especially those bumping their head up against that arbitrary ceiling and they’re not being able to employ more people.”<\/p>\n

Small and family business minister Nadia Clancy said South Australia already had the second-highest payroll tax threshold.<\/p>\n

She said she had been working with Primary Industries Minister Clare Scriven to help the wine industry.<\/p>\n

“We will continue to do what we can on our level of government just to support small and family businesses and to make sure we have the best settings,” she said, without directly commenting on changes to capital gains tax or the tax on trust incomes.<\/p>\n

Despite the threat from Mr Taylor to move, Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said South Australia remained “the best state in Australia to do business”.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/p>\n

Tom Koutsantonis says South Australia is supportive of businesses. (ABC News: Ashlin Blieschke)<\/p>\n

“If there are federal changes that are impacting businesses and they need to restructure to try and help themselves under that, if they do it here, they won’t pay taxes,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If you move overseas or interstate you will pay taxes to restructure, here you don’t.<\/p>\n

“We’re the only jurisdiction in Australia to have abolished commercial transactional taxes like stamp duty.”<\/p>\n

But Mr Taylor said there needed to be more conversations between industry and government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There’s so much uncertainty, it’s pretty hard to jump at all the different proposals. You can wake up having nightmares about it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We just need a bit of discussion here before we create something that will ruin a very promising industry for a very, very long period of time.”More news from regional SA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A major South Australian winemaker is considering moving his business internationally in response to proposed tax changes.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,271687,319903,341678,341680,341674,44,341676,341677,341673,341675,341679,341681,341682,341683],"class_list":["post-701593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ben-hood","tag-federal-budget-2026","tag-federal-budget-taxes","tag-is-taylors-wines-a-family-business","tag-mitchell-taylor","tag-news","tag-small-business-tax","tag-small-business-tax-federal-budget","tag-taylors-wines","tag-treasurer-tom-koutsantonis","tag-where-is-taylors-wines","tag-wine-equalisation-tax","tag-wine-tax","tag-wine-tax-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}