Olivia ThompsonMichael Voss handed in his resignation as Carlton's senior coach on 11 May 2026, ending nearly five seasons at IKON Park with the Blues sitting at 1-8 and the club describing the exit as a "mutual agreement". The 50-year-old leaves with at least one season remaining on his contract — a contract reportedly worth around AU$1.2 million per year. Whether the next 12 months pay out in full, in part, or not at all depends almost entirely on a single word in the parties' deed of separation: did he resign, or was he terminated.
For the thousands of Australians on senior executive contracts — coaches, CEOs, GMs, partners — the Voss exit highlights a tax and structuring problem that is easy to misread and expensive to get wrong.
"Mutual agreement" is not a tax category
Carlton's official statement says Voss and the club came to a mutual agreement; ESPN's reporting frames the departure as Voss resigning after being told no extension would be offered beyond 2026. Those framings serve different audiences but produce very different financial outcomes.
The Australian Taxation Office recognises four termination categories: genuine redundancy, early retirement, employer termination, and resignation. Each carries its own tax treatment. A "mutual agreement" sits nowhere on that list. It is a commercial label that must still be classified under the Australian Taxation Office's employment termination payments framework before any cheque is written.
Get the classification wrong and either the employer over-withholds tax (the executive recovers it next financial year, but is short for months) or the employer under-withholds (the executive carries a tax debt with general interest charge attached).
What changes when an executive resigns versus is terminated
Three financial levers move depending on how the exit is documented.
Notice and final pay. A coach or executive who resigns must usually give written notice under their contract; the employer can choose whether to pay them out or have them work the notice. A coach who is terminated is paid in lieu of notice regardless. For a contract paying AU$1.2 million per year, three months' notice represents AU$300,000 — taxable at the executive's marginal rate as salary.
Termination payment cap. Where part of a payout is a genuine ETP — typically a "golden handshake" beyond contractual entitlements — concessional tax rates apply up to the ETP cap, which sits at AU$245,000 for the 2025-26 financial year. Above the cap, the marginal rate applies. Resigned executives generally cannot access the higher redundancy cap.
Unused leave. Annual leave and long service leave paid out on resignation are taxed at marginal rates with no concession. The same amounts paid out on a genuine redundancy receive a concessional tax treatment capped at 32% including Medicare levy. For an executive with substantial accrued leave, the difference can run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Restraint of trade: the clause that ruins return offers
Senior coaching contracts in Australian professional sport routinely include restraint-of-trade clauses preventing the coach from joining a rival club for a defined period — often 6 to 12 months. The same clauses appear in CEO and senior executive contracts across every industry.
A restraint is only enforceable to the extent it is reasonable in geography, duration and scope of activity. A clause stopping a coach from working in any sport anywhere in Australia for two years would almost certainly fail. A clause limiting them from coaching an AFL men's senior side for one season is usually upheld.
Crucially, an executive on garden leave continues to be paid by the original employer; that pay must continue until the restraint period ends or the parties release each other in writing. Walking into a new role before that release is signed exposes the executive to an injunction and the new employer to a damages claim.
Superannuation: the invisible six-figure issue
Voss's reported salary places him well above the maximum super contribution base, but executive remuneration packages frequently include enhanced super contributions or a salary-sacrifice arrangement. The concessional contributions cap for 2025-26 is AU$30,000.
Two traps catch resigning executives. First, terminal pay-outs of accrued bonus, leave or commission can push concessional contributions above the cap if the employer's payroll system defaults to applying the full super guarantee rate to every component. Excess contributions are taxed at marginal rates plus an interest charge. Second, retirees who plan to roll out of accumulation into a pension phase should not finalise the rollover until the deed of separation is signed and dated, since post-termination payments back into super after rollover may trigger reporting issues.
What an exit deed should actually contain
A well-drafted termination deed for a senior executive contains seven items: the classification of the termination (resignation, mutual exit, or termination), the total payment broken down by component (salary, leave, ETP, bonus), the tax-withholding treatment of each component, the restraint period and geography, the agreed reference and announcement wording, a mutual release of claims, and a confidentiality clause with carve-outs for tax and regulatory disclosures.
Carlton's announcement and Voss's farewell press conference are public-relations documents. The deed sitting behind them is the financial document. For any Australian executive negotiating an exit in 2026, that distinction is worth several hundred thousand dollars.
The action step
A wealth management or tax specialist should review every component of a senior executive's termination payout before the deed is signed — not after. The same review, done properly, takes 4-8 hours, costs a fraction of the payout itself, and routinely identifies AU$50,000 to AU$200,000 of optimisable tax for executives on packages above AU$500,000.
Voss leaves IKON Park with his reputation intact and the right of the Blues' next coach to inherit a club he described as being "in a better place than when I arrived". Whether he also leaves with the right deed depends on advice he has already received — or has not.
