Blog
Reforms to stop companies avoiding employee entitlements
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 ..
ATO's occupation-specific guides
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 ..
Reporting of transfer balance account information
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 ..
Ability to lodge nil activity statements in advance
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 ..
Keeping ABN details up to date
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 ..
Change to travel expenses for truck drivers
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 ..
ATO warning regarding work-related expense claims for 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 ..
Extension of the $20,000 SBE Immediate Deduction Threshold
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 ..
Simpler BAS is coming soon
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 ..
Who is assessed on interest on bank accounts?
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 ..
Recent Posts
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