The 2021-2022 Federal Budget has been announced on 11 May 2021, with a few welcoming measures for small businesses. Here are two main measures that would benefit your business once it becomes law.
Businesses with an aggregated turnover of less than $5 billion will be able to continue to fully expense the cost of new depreciable assets and the cost of improvements to existing eligible assets in the first year of use.
The busy season is here, and we are meeting our clients everyday to help with preparing their tax returns, business and tax advisory and bookkeeping queries. Very often during our conversations they raise some interesting questions, let’s have a look at some of them here.
It’s tax time and everybody is in a hurry to get their tax returns lodged for a nice little surprise refund from the new Low & Middle Income Tax Offset that has recently passed the Parliament and became law.
For those who worked as an employee in the 2019 financial year, you may notice that your employer did not provide you with a PAYG Summary (or Group Certificate). Before storming off to the payroll manager and questioning them, it is nice to know that the law has changed: Single Touch Payroll may now apply to your employer’s business. (What is Single Touch Payroll, or STP?)
We all know that the ATO has the power to request information from third parties to verify information declared in our tax returns.
Some examples are where employers are required to submit their PAYG Summaries, banks are required to advise the ATO of interest earned in bank accounts, health insurers are required to confirm with the ATO the insurance covers and premiums paid for each taxpayer…
Now they have taken this to another level…
Remember in December 2018 when cryptocurrency was a hot topic, where everyone was trying to get in and have a share of the pie?
It is estimated that there are between 500,000 to one million Australians that have invested in cryptocurrency. Because of this, it has been on the ATO’s radar as it is seen to be used to move funds to the black economy, hide money offshore, and is sometimes linked with risks with unexplained wealth and undeclared taxable capital gains.
Recently the ATO announced that they are extending their data-matching program to include Cryptocurrencies.
How do they do that?
They require cryptocurrency designated service providers (DSPs) to provide reports to the ATO on an ongoing basis. The data includes the following:
How will that impact me?
If you have been declaring your cryptocurrency trading/investments in your tax returns – nothing will happen.
If you have been trading/investing in cryptocurrency, especially where you have sold/converted between different cryptocurrencies, you may be contacted by the ATO as you may have omitted declaring these in your tax return. You will be given opportunity to verify the information collected before any compliance action is undertaken.
What do I do now, if I have omitted transactions in my tax return?
You can voluntarily notify the ATO by amending your tax return to include the omitted transaction, the ATO will then prepare an amended assessment where you will be required to pay back the extra tax liability (or receive extra tax refund as a result). If you are having trouble preparing an amendment, Aston is here to help.
From time to time we get questions from clients where they ask if they should have private health insurance. While it is a very personal decision, sometimes it may make a difference to your tax position when it comes to preparing your tax return.
Let’s dive into some of the common questions asked!
