Serving Sydney’s Inner West
As 30 June approaches, many businesses are asking how they can save tax for the year. There’s lots of noise about the instant asset write off and many of the large retailers are offering discounts to entice you to spend before the end of the financial year. But before you leap in, this is only one of the ways to save tax. Here are 10 tax saving tips for you to think about before you head out to your nearest computer retailer. Continue reading “10 tax planning tips for small business”
We driven into motor vehicles, we’ve partied our way through entertainment, so what’s left? The true answer is lots but I won’t bore you forever. Instead, I’ll go through a few more highlights. Continue reading “FBT – what else is there?”
When many people think of fringe benefits tax, most automatically think Entertainment – boozy lunches and tickets to the corporate box. But entertainment includes a very wide variety of activities – from free movie tickets to junkets to foreign destinations. But as with all tax related matters, not all entertainment is taxed equally. Continue reading “When is entertainment a fringe benefit?”
By far and away the largest category of fringe benefits provided in Australia are cars. In the 2016 year, the Australian Taxation Office indicated that the total taxable value of all cars provided to employees in the year was $1.3 billion. This makes car benefits a significant contributor to tax revenue in Australia. But just because you have provided your employee with a motor vehicle does not automatically guarantee that there is fringe benefits tax (FBT) to pay.
So let’s go through an overview of when your business might be liable for FBT on the vehicles they provide. Continue reading “Cars, cars, cars and fringe benefits”
It’s hard to imagine, but there was a time in Australia when a boozy business lunch, an employer provided car and a free trip to the Grand Prix were common ways of doing business. Some might accuse the Tax Office of being fun police, but as 31 March draws closer, I thought it would be a good time to remind every one about fringe benefits tax (FBT). Nowadays, I think we all know that employers can’t give you benefits that aren’t taxed. But how does FBT work? What’s included? And does FBT mean that there’s no point to employers giving their staff non-salary perks? In this first post, I’m going to try and answer some of the common FBT FAQs. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll look at some of the more common benefits in depth. Continue reading “FBT FAQs”
Amongst all the events the last sitting of parliament, you may have missed the news that legislation to extend Single Touch Payroll was passed and will now apply to all businesses. Continue reading “An update on single touch payroll”
Last week I attended the Roadshows for both Xero and MYOB (they were on consecutive days at the same venue – coincidence?). This is when the software providers spruik their current product and showcase the shiny new developments that you can expect for the coming year. Think Steve Jobs launching a new iPhone but a whole more accounting-ish!
The other week I received an email threatening to shut down my website unless I sent Bitcoin. I’m pretty sure you’ve all seen something similar. While this one was just a scam and easily fixed by upgrading my security, it got me thinking about how a small business could easily be crippled by a random act – either malicious and intentional or a natural disaster. Big business will always have a business continuity plan (I’m old enough to remember the doom and gloom doing the rounds way back in 1999 with the potential disruption from Y2K), but what about small businesses like us?
Want to sort out your Assets from your Accruals? Here are some commonly used accounting terms so you can talk like an accountant! Continue reading “Sorting through the accounting jargon”