The DIAC has recently announced a new business innovation and investment program – you can view our previous FAQ post here.
The key reforms are:
- Renaming the Business Skills program to the Business Innovation and Investment program.
- Reducing the number of visa subclasses from 13 to three by:
- removing the independent visa categories and other underutilised visa subclasses; and
- absorbing the separate business owner and investor subclasses as streams of a single visa subclass.
- Integrating the new Business Innovation and Investment visas with the skilled migrant selection model, SkillSelect, which will be launched on 1 July 2012. (For more information on SkillSelect, please view our previous FAQs here: https://www.themigrationplace.com/2012/04/16/new-skillselect-model-to-come-into-effect-on-1-july-2012/.)
- Facilitating entry of entrepreneurs that have sourced venture capital funding in Australia.
- Introducing an innovation points test for provisional visa applicants.
- Granting access to flexibility provisions to achieve permanent residence and encourage innovative business.
- Increasing asset thresholds to better align with the Australian business community.
- Introducing visa criteria to improve the integrity of the program.
- Introducing a new Significant Investor visa.
The Migration Place is one of only a few migration agencies that have experience in business and investor visas, and our website has some useful general advice: https://www.themigrationplace.com/investor-and-business-visa/
Indeed The Migration Place is a division of Irish Bentley Lawyers (www.irishbentley.com.au) which is a boutique commercial law Firm in Brisbane.
Our Principal Migration Lawyer, Zeke Bentley, has over 15 years of experience in setting up company structures and drafting/negotiating commercial agreements.
We can provide a holistic solution to help walk you through the entire process – from visa application from effective tax structures through to leasing agreements and applying for government grants.