With the year steadily making its way towards the festive period, businesses that are turning their attention to end-of-year celebrations will need to keep in mind the tax implications of throwing a Christmas party or handing over gifts to staff. Of course there’s nothing wrong with getting into the yuletide spirit, but business owners should...

The worryingly early start to Australia’s bushfire season in New South Wales means scores of local volunteers are standing on the frontline, battling and protecting residents from the devastating fires. This raises the important practical question – do payments to volunteers constitute assessable income and are their expenses tax deductible? There is no legal definition...

The Tax Office has published a list of the top 10 types of compliance mistakes made by SMSF trustees. The data from which the list is taken is based on the type of contraventions reported by approved SMSF auditors since 2005 (when compulsory contravention reporting started) up to June 30, 2012. The top 10 contravention...

The Tax Office has issued advice regarding fuel tax credits after it noticed some errors creeping into recent activity statements — also reminding businesses that rates can change regularly (and have done so recently) and that this can be a common source of the mistakes being made. For those businesses eligible to claim fuel tax...

Word on the street is that the Tax Office has taken additional steps to engage with self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) trustees to bring their lodgement obligations up-to-date. Over the past few months, the Tax Office has been writing directly to SMSF trustees with two or more lodgement obligations overdue, advising them that they will remove...

dependant tax offset claims The Tax Office has stopped all tax returns with a Dependant (Invalid and Carer) Tax Offset claim and is reviewing them, following an unexpected upsurge in the number of individuals that have made claims for the new tax offset. The new Dependant (Invalid and Carer) Tax Offset is only available to...

Got a carry-forward tax loss burning a hole in your business’s pocket? Don’t get too creative if you’ve thought how handy it would be to absorb that loss as a tax deduction for a future income year. Tax law has measures in place to ensure such deductions are limited to those businesses that are legitimately...

If you believe your tax assessment is incorrect, the first step should be to go over your tax return or activity statement to check details against your notice of assessment. If you still believe the assessment is wrong, or if you have extra information that may change it, an amendment can be sought from the...

One of the big motivations for considering using a trust will be to protect assets. Property and other assets can be moved into a trust for protection from creditors, to maintain an estate until a beneficiary becomes old enough to have legal possession, or isolate valuable assets from a trading company that may be more...

Every investor goes in with dreams of a pot of gold, but there is a fundamental dichotomy of investor types – one looks to line their pockets with investment returns along the way, and another who is patient to wait until the end of the rainbow to reap the rewards. The distinction between investing for...