What do you mean by set up an account? If you have a company...

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    What do you mean by set up an account? If you have a company established and want to trade shares using that company, then you open an account with whichever broker you prefer and indicate that it is a corporate account, rather than an individual or trust account.

    Trading under a company structure does not minimise your tax and may in fact increase it. Firstly, the company has to be recognised as a trader by the ATO, and there are guidelines for determining if your share buy/sell activity constitutes trading or investing (search the ATO site for these guidelines). You can assume your activity constitutes trading (and do the company tax returns on that basis), but if audited, the ATO may determine otherwise and have you re-do as an investor. You could get an ATO ruling if you want to be sure.

    Assuming you are genuinely trading, the only sure way to minimise tax is to actually continuously make losses. Then you pay no tax, but your company will not survive for long. Maximising profit is what you want to do and pay the tax due. Thinking there are big expenses that can be written off is false. Your expenses have to be justifiable as a proper business expense related to share trading (so computer depreciation for business use etc.).
 
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