Most years, EOFY tax planning is a familiar exercise. You look at where your numbers sit, time a few deductions, top up your super if you haven’t, and work out what you owe. It’s useful. It matters. But the conversation is broadly the same.
This year is not a normal year.
Farming families and businesses across our region have spent the last twelve months absorbing pressure from every direction. Fuel costs that don’t ease. Supply chains that stay fragile. Global trade conditions repricing what it costs to grow a crop, move livestock, run a transport route, or source inputs. For farming families in particular, 2025–26 has been a year of absorbing costs that arrived faster than income adjusted to meet them.
And from 1 July, two more changes land simultaneously. Payday Super fundamentally shifts how cash moves through payroll cycles. New AML compliance obligations change how professional services firms manage client information. The ground keeps moving.
The standard EOFY conversation asks: ” How do we minimise your tax bill this year? That question still matters. But in 2026, the farming families and businesses that come out of this financial year in the best position will have asked a harder one: how do we position ourselves to handle what comes next?
Plan for More Than One Version of the Future
Most tax planning sessions produce one set of projections. One modelled outcome. One assumed path. This year, that’s not enough.
For farming families, variable income is nothing new — a good season and a tough one can look completely different on paper. But the variables have multiplied. Commodity prices are moving in response to global trade decisions made far from Central West NSW. Input costs — fuel, fertiliser, freight, chemicals — have been elevated for long enough that they’re now baked into forecasts in ways that may not hold if conditions shift. And seasonal variability sits atop all of that.
When we sit down with clients this EOFY, we’re running multiple models. What does your position look like if commodity prices soften further next year? If input costs stay where they are? If a wet finish to the season changes your income timing? What decisions would you make differently depending on the answer? This kind of scenario thinking used to feel like something only large operations needed. It isn’t anymore. It’s the only honest response to a year where the ground has kept moving — and it’s where a good planning conversation earns its keep.
Liquidity and Cash Flow: Keeping the Farm Running
Here’s something we’re seeing more of this year: families and business owners who do everything right on the tax side and still find themselves squeezed on cash. A lower tax liability doesn’t help you if the money isn’t there when it needs to be.
For farming families, cash flow has always been seasonal and uneven. Income arrives in lumps. Expenses — inputs, machinery, wages — don’t wait. If you have employees, Payday Super from 1 July means superannuation is deducted from your account with every pay run rather than quarterly. That’s a real shift in the timing of cash out the door, and it hits at the same time as post-harvest expenses and new season input commitments for many operations.
The broader point is that this year’s planning conversation needs to put cash flow resilience alongside tax minimisation — rather than treating them as separate conversations. What does your buffer look like going into the new financial year? Where are the pressure points? Are there decisions you can make before 30 June that improve your position on both?
Super: More Than a Deduction, More Than a Compliance Box
Most people understand that making additional superannuation contributions before 30 June can reduce taxable income. The concessional contributions cap sits at $30,000 for 2025–26, and if you haven’t reached it, contributing before year-end is worth considering.
For farming families, super often gets deprioritised. The farm is the asset. The farm is the plan. Contributions feel like they’re pulling money away from an operation that always has a better use for it. That thinking is understandable, but it carries real risk — particularly for family members who work on the farm but don’t have a clear ownership stake or retirement plan separate from the land.
In the current environment, there’s another dimension worth thinking about. Super is a protected structure. Contributing to it before 30 June moves money into an environment that sits outside your operating business, insulated from the pressures that business might face in the year ahead. For farming families carrying significant debt or input costs, having some wealth building in a separate, protected environment has value beyond the annual deduction.
If you’re unsure where you sit against your contributions cap, or whether there are catch-up contribution opportunities from prior years, talk to us. Getting this wrong in either direction has consequences, and it’s one of those areas where a brief conversation can save significant trouble.
Is Your Structure Still Doing the Job?
This question applies to every client, but for farming families it carries particular weight. The structures that farming operations sit within — family trusts, partnerships, companies — were often set up years ago to suit circumstances that may have changed considerably since then.
Family composition changes. The next generation comes into the business, or decides not to. Off-farm income earners in the family affect how trust distributions should be managed. Debt levels shift. Succession conversations that once felt distant start to feel urgent. Each of these changes can affect whether your current structure remains tax-efficient and suited to the direction the family is heading.
This EOFY is a practical time to review the structure alongside the numbers. Are trust distributions being managed in a way that reflects your current family circumstances? Are the right assets in the right structures, given where you want to be in five years? These aren’t questions that have to be resolved before 30 June — but identifying that they need attention before June 30 means you’re in a position to act, not react.
What to Do Before 30 June
There is still time — and this is the right time to use it. The decisions that make a difference must be made before year-end, so the conversation needs to happen now.
At MBC, our EOFY planning sessions are built around your specific situation, not a checklist. For farming families, that means understanding the season, the structure, the family, and the income picture together — not just running the numbers in isolation. Some clients want a focused conversation and a clear action plan. Others want to work through projections, model a few scenarios, and think through bigger decisions. Both are the right approach depending on where you’re at.
If you haven’t already had your planning conversation with your MBC accountant, now is the time to book it in. Ten weeks sounds like plenty. Right now, it is. In June, it won’t feel that way.
