Debt Consolidation and Finance Broking Across Victoria

Victoria carries a wider spread of industries than most people assume. Professional services and health cluster through inner and eastern Melbourne. Advanced manufacturing, food processing and freight sit in the south-east and the west. Construction runs hard through the growth corridors north, west and south-east of the city. Outside Melbourne, the Goulburn Valley grows and processes food, the Latrobe Valley is working through the end of coal-fired generation, and Geelong has spent a decade rebuilding around health, services and new industry after the car plants closed.

That mix matters because it shapes the debt. A civil contractor in Pakenham does not carry debt the way a dental practice in Hawthorn does. One is exposed to progress claims and retention; the other to equipment finance and a practice loan. Both can end up with an ATO balance, and both usually get there the same way: a lean quarter, a decision to pay staff and suppliers first, and a BAS that gets lodged but not paid.

The industries we see most in Victoria

• Building and construction trades, including civil, concreting, landscaping and fit-out
• Transport, warehousing and last-mile freight through the west and south-east
• Manufacturing and food processing, from Dandenong South to Shepparton
• Hospitality and retail across the inner suburbs and regional main streets
• Health, allied health and professional practices in the eastern and bayside suburbs
• Agriculture and irrigation-dependent businesses across the north and west of the state

Most conversations about business debt start with the ATO, and they should. But Victorian businesses often carry a second layer of arrears with the State Revenue Office Victoria, and that layer is easy to forget until a letter arrives. Payroll tax, land tax and duty are state obligations. They are assessed and collected separately from anything the ATO does, and being in a payment arrangement with one does not settle you with the other.

Two Victorian changes are worth knowing about. A temporary surcharge was attached to payroll tax and land tax as part of the state's COVID debt repayment plan, so businesses that were comfortably under a threshold before may not be now. And Victoria has begun replacing stamp duty on commercial and industrial property with an annual property tax, with transition rules that depend on when the property last changed hands. Neither of those is something we advise on. Your accountant or a registered tax agent will tell you where you sit. What we do is work out whether the arrears that result can be refinanced.

An ATO balance does not sit still. The general interest charge compounds daily, and it is no longer deductible the way a business loan's interest usually is. That is the whole problem in one sentence. A balance that felt manageable at the end of one financial year is a different animal by the end of the next, and the ATO has become markedly firmer about firm action on older debt.

The pattern we see across Victoria is consistent. A business trades through a slow period on its own cash. GST collected gets used as working capital. PAYG withholding follows. Superannuation guarantee falls behind, which is the one that carries personal exposure for directors. By the time somebody rings us, there are usually three or four separate pressures: the ATO balance, a payment plan that was set at a number the business cannot actually meet, one or two short-term lenders taking daily or weekly direct debits, and a credit file that is starting to show it.

1. 01Get the true total on one page, including the state obligations and the short-term facilities most people leave off the list.
2. 02Work out what the business can genuinely service each month, not what it hopes it can.
3. 03Test whether there is security, usually property, that can carry a consolidated facility.
4. 04Match the situation to lenders on our panel who will actually look at it, rather than applying everywhere and marking the credit file.

Our office is at 1/3 Westside Avenue, Port Melbourne. That is the only address we have, and we would rather say so plainly than pretend to a shopfront in every suburb. It has not stopped us working with clients in Mildura, Warrnambool, Wodonga or the far east of Gippsland.

1. 01

   First call

   Twenty minutes on the phone. What you owe, to whom, and what is pressing hardest. No documents needed to have that conversation.

2. 02

   Document gathering

   Everything moves securely online. Bank statements, BAS lodgements, an ATO integrated client account portal print, financials, and identification. We tell you exactly what is needed, once.

3. 03

   Structure and lender selection

   We build the picture, then take it to the lenders on our panel most likely to fund it. You see the reasoning before anything is submitted.

4. 04

   Settlement and after

   We deal with the lender, the solicitors and the payout figures. Then we stay in the file, because the point is not the settlement, it is what the business looks like a year later.

Where an in-person meeting genuinely helps, and where it is practical, we will make the trip or arrange a video meeting with everyone in the room at once, including your accountant. Regional clients tell us the video meeting with the accountant present is the single most useful hour of the process.

Melbourne is the bulk of the work, but not all of it. We have written detail for the areas we are asked about most often, so you can read something specific to your part of the state rather than a generic page with your suburb pasted into it.

• Melbourne, and the inner suburbs around our office: Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, Southbank, Docklands, St Kilda and Richmond
• The eastern corridor: Hawthorn, Box Hill, Glen Waverley and Ringwood
• The south-east industrial and growth belt: Dandenong, Frankston, Cranbourne, Berwick, Narre Warren and Pakenham
• The north and west: Preston, Coburg, Craigieburn, Footscray, Sunshine, Werribee and Point Cook
• Regional Victoria: Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton and Traralgon

We have seen worse and found the way through. That certainty is the first thing we hand a client.