Blog

Reforms to stop companies avoiding employee entitlements

- Monday, November 13, 2017

The Government will introduce new laws to stop corporate misuse of the Australian Government’s Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) scheme. The FEG scheme is an avenue of last resort that assists employees when their employer’s business fails and the employer has not made adequate provision f ..

Read more

ATO's occupation-specific guides

Scott Robertson - Tuesday, November 07, 2017

The ATO has developed occupation-specific guides to help taxpayers understand what they can and can’t claim as work-related expenses, including: - C ar expenses - Home office expenses - Clothing expenses - S elf-education or professional development expenses. The guides are available f ..

Read more

Reporting of transfer balance account information

- Wednesday, November 01, 2017

The recent superannuation reforms introduced the concept of a 'transfer balance account', to basically record the value of member balances moving into or out of 'retirement phase'. In order to monitor these amounts, the ATO is introducing new reporting requirements and forms. The ATO has  ..

Read more

Ability to lodge nil activity statements in advance

Scott Robertson - Monday, October 23, 2017

The ATO generally issues activity statements by the end of the relevant month under their normal processes, allowing the statement to be lodged by 21 days after the end of the month, or 28 days after the end of the relevant quarter (as appropriate). However, the ATO recognises that there may b ..

Read more

Keeping ABN details up to date

- Friday, September 15, 2017

The ATO finds that business tends to forget to update their Australian Business Number (ABN) details in the Australian Business Register (ABR) when their circumstances or details change, so they have asked that we contact our clients to help keep your ABN details up to date. In particular t ..

Read more

Change to travel expenses for truck drivers

Scott Robertson - Friday, September 01, 2017

The ATO has released its latest taxation determination on reasonable travel expenses, and it includes a big change for employee truck drivers. For the 2017/18 income year, the reasonable amount for travel expenses (excluding accommodation expenses, which must be substantiated with written  ..

Read more

ATO warning regarding work-related expense claims for 2017

Scott Robertson - Wednesday, August 09, 2017

The ATO is increasing attention, scrutiny and education on work-related expenses (WREs) this tax time. Assistant Commissioner Kath Anderson said: “We have seen claims for clothing and laundry expenses increase around 20% over the last five years. While this increase isn’t a sign that all o ..

Read more

Extension of the $20,000 SBE Immediate Deduction Threshold

- Tuesday, July 25, 2017

In the 2017/18 Federal Budget handed down on 9 May 2017, the Federal Government announced that it intended to extend the ability of Small Business Entity (or ‘SBE’) taxpayers to claim an outright deduction for depreciating assets costing less than $20,000 until 30 June 2018. This Budget Night an ..

Read more

Simpler BAS is coming soon

Scott Robertson - Friday, July 07, 2017

The ATO is reducing the amount of information needed to be included in the business activity statement (or ‘BAS’) to simplify GST reporting. From 1 July 2017, Simpler BAS will be the default GST reporting method for small businesses with a GST turnover of less than $10 million. In relatio ..

Read more

Who is assessed on interest on bank accounts?

- Friday, June 23, 2017

As a general proposition, for income tax purposes, interest income on a bank account is assessable to the account holders in proportion to their beneficial ownership of the money in the account. The ATO will assume, unless there is evidence to the contrary, that joint account holders benefici ..

Read more

STAY INFORMED - SIGN UP FOR BUSINESS IDEAS, NEWS & ALERTS.


You will receive monthly/quarterly business ideas, news & alerts. Unsubscribe with one click.