Avid.legal

2025 Avid.legal misogi challenge completed! ✅ Heaphy Track - 2 days 78.4kms Karamea>Takaka with a night in the McKay Hut! What is a misogi - it’s a challenge to get you out of your comfort zone for a reset. Our rules are: - it must be physical ✅ (two marathons with a 10kg pack) - it must be in nature ✅ (the benefits of tree bathing are real - despite how fatigued you feel!) - it must challenge you, with a no greater than 50% chance at succeeding ✅ (some rough places were went in that last 10km) What have some of the others in the team done - well, I’ll leave that to them. Feeling mentally refreshed even if the body is exhausted!

A big thank you to the Ministry of Awesome team for hosting us yesterday and for bringing together past and present MOA cohort members to dig into capital raising, founder vesting, commercial “triage” and plenty of cautionary tales and war stories along the way! Huge thanks to Zach for running the session and to everyone who joined and shared their own experiences. It was great to spend time in a balmy and buzzy Christchurch and see so much energy and enthusiasm across such a wide range of founders and sectors, as well as how MOA continues to help Kiwi businesses grow, evolve and push the boundaries. Keep up the mahi and see you again soon! Tony Davis Avid.legal

💡 NZ ESOP Tax Bill 💡 An opportunity to support submissions to improve proposed ESOP tax changes for high-growth company/start-up employees: Submissions to improve the ESOP Tax Bill are due next Thursday, 23 October. [EDITED 21 Oct: 4th submission added (not in attached draft version)] If you would like to support our submissions (attached), please email your name (and organisation, if relevant) to madison.kilworth @ avid.legal and murray.whyte @ avid.legal We make [4] key recommendations: 1. Defer the ESOP tax payment; not the ESOP valuation: remove the 39% quasi capital gain element by fixing the taxable value at the date employee shares are received; 2. Dividends ≠ liquidity event: changes to avoid small dividend payments triggering the payment of the entire deferred tax amount; 3. Employee choice: give employees (not employers) the choice to opt into the ESOP tax deferral regime because each employee will have a different risk versus reward profile based on their own personal circumstances. [4. Top hat restructure ≠ liquidity event: changes to avoid share transfers that occur as part of a “top hat restructure” inadvertently accelerating the payment of the entire deferred tax amount where such a restructure provides no liquidity to fund the tax payment.] With support, we hope we can positively influence the proposed ESOP tax changes for the better. Avid.legal Madison Kilworth Bruno Bordignon Tony Davis Jared McIntosh Judith Harper