Month: June 2021

With The End Of Financial Year Approaching, Now Is The Perfect Time To Plan Your Business’s Future

Posted on by Adam_Admin

With the end of the 2020 financial year rapidly approaching this month, many businesses will be reflecting on how they managed to navigate and meet the challenges of a turbulent time (namely, the COVID-19 pandemic).

By taking what they have learned, what worked and what failed, businesses should be able to plan for their future for the next financial year and understand how to take their learnings from the previous year forward with them to create preventative strategies and coping measures.

A good business plan recognises these periods of change as opportunities to innovate, challenge the business and engineer a plan that allows them to take chances but remain safe at the same time.

Planning For Your Business’s Financial Future This Financial Year

  • Ensure that you are legally compliant with your approach to your employees by conducting an audit of all employment contracts.
  • Plan out and undertake a risk-management plan to identify vulnerable areas and what strategies you can employ to mitigate their effect. Include potential exit strategies for the business and a succession plan for worst-case scenarios.
  • If there were any excellent habits or innovations developed throughout the pandemic, retaining them should be a priority
  • Manage financial obligations, such as commitments to leases, staff, debt etc., and see how those can be managed in the event of volatility or turbulence. Revisit grants and support packages and see if these are still available/useful to you
  • Plot out guaranteed, likely and potential projects or income and your expenses, taxes, overheads, wages and subsidies that should be accounted for ahead of time.
  • Surplus cash generated can be used to pay down debt or take advantage of opportunities through reinvestment in areas such as hiring new staff or purchasing equipment (especially with the instant asset write off scheme being extended for another year)
  • Consider implementing reliable financial software (such as e-invoicing) to ensure everything from expenses and invoices to taxes and analytics are meticulously organised.

We are here to help you plan out your business’s future for the next financial year, including how to prepare financially for any eventualities, what might be the best path forward to deal with potential or existing debts, and what schemes or grants your business could be helpful to your business. Contact us for an appointment today.

Invested In Cryptocurrencies? So Is The ATO – But Not For The Reason You Think

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Cryptocurrency investments are on the ATO’s radar this tax return season, with 100,000 taxpayers to be alerted by the ATO of their tax obligations from their cryptocurrency investments this financial year.

It’s an outcome that has resulted from a growing concern that many taxpayers who invest in cryptocurrency believe their gains to be tax-free, or only taxable when their holdings are cashed into Australian dollars.

This proactive prompt to taxpayers is a repeat of the ATO’s 2020 attempt, which resulted (after contacting 100,000 taxpayers) in the lodgement of 140,000 returns.

Cryptocurrency’s current popularity as an investment solution for many taxpayers, due to the fairly consistent returns, is causing the ATO to evaluate the digital asset’s tax implications further.

Currently, those who invest in cryptocurrency need to be aware of the capital gains tax implications that may eventuate from selling or buying and any losses or gains that may come about due to investing, particularly in how it impacts their reportable income tax.

The ATO will also be heading into tax time with access to more data and the ability to track those investing in crypto-assets and ensure they are meeting their tax obligations.

The best way to ensure that your tax returns are lodged correctly when it comes to cryptocurrency reporting is to keep immaculate records. You should ensure that you have records of:

  • Dates of transactions
  • The value of the cryptocurrency in Australian dollars at the time of the transaction
  • What the transactions were for
  • Who the other party was (even if it’s just their wallet address)Be sure that you are meeting your tax obligations this tax return season (especially to avoid the harsh penalties resulting from incorrect reporting or lodgements) by speaking with us. We can advise you further about your particular situation and give you the advice you need to suit your circumstances.

Getting a Double Deduction for your Super Contributions?

Posted on by Adam_Admin

Each year you are entitled to a tax deduction for a certain amount of superannuation contributions. The tax deduction is available to your employer if they contribute on your behalf but it can also be available to you personally when you make extra contributions to super.


The amount that you can claim as a tax deduction is limited to what is known as your Concessional Contributions Cap.  There is a standard Cap of $25,000, though that is increasing to $27,500 on 1st July 2021. There are certain people that can add amounts that haven’t been used in previous years to this cap amount.
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If you go over your Concessional Contributions Cap, the excess contributions are merely added to your taxable income so you don’t get any tax benefits out of the contribution.

For example, let’s say your Concessional Contributions Cap is $25,000 but you make $35,000 in concessional contributions.  The extra $10,000 will be added to your taxable income but you will receive a credit for the $1,500 in contributions tax paid by the super fund.

But there is a little known trick to allow you to “bring forward” a tax deduction for your concessional contributions.  This “hack” is commonly known as a Contributions Reserving Strategy and it has been approved by the Tax Office.  If done correctly it allows you to take some of next year’s Concessional Contributions Cap and bring it into this financial year.  But it must be done correctly and if you take advantage of it, you need to lodge a specific form with the Tax Office to let them know. The ATO will almost certainly audit what you have done.

It is also important to note that it is really only achievable to do this strategy with a Self Managed Superannuation Fund.  It is also important to note that you are merely bringing forward your contribution (using it this year) and that you won’t be able to use that amount next year, so careful planning is also needed.
This type of strategy is used by people who will have an unusually higher taxable income this year than they will next year.  So, for example, you might have a large capital gain this year or you might be retiring and have no taxable income next year.

Leaving it until the new financial year to discuss this strategy is far too late, and it absolutely cannot be done after late June. It is essential that you talk to us if you feel next year’s taxable income will be a lot lower than this year

Downsizer Contributions – What Are They?

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If you are aged 65 years or older, you are currently able to make downsizer contributions of up to $300,000 into your superannuation fund from the sale of your main residence (as of 1 July 2018).

The Federal Budget recently announced that the age limit for downsizer contribution payments will be reduced from 65 to 60 once the relevant legislation has been passed.

This means that you can increase your super fund’s balance without impacting on your contribution caps (as it is not a non-concessional contribution), and this contribution can still be made even if your superannuation balance exceeds $1.6 million. It does however count towards your transfer balance cap, which is currently set at $1.6 million (increasing to $1.7 million for most people on 1 July 2021).

The downsizer contributions scheme can only be accessed once, so it can only apply when you sell or dispose of one home, including selling a part interest in a home. It is a one-time deal essentially and is not a tax-deductible amount.

You can however make multiple downsizer contributions from the proceeds of a single sale, but the total of the contributions cannot exceed $300,000 less than any other downsizer contributions that you have made.

You and your spouse can (in certain circumstances) both make downsizer contributions from the sale of the home even if the house was only owned by one of you, provided you both meet all the requirements.

These contributions will also come into account for determining whether or not you are eligible to receive the age pension.

If you would like more information on how to proceed with downsizer contributions, are looking to sell your home and wanting to continue with downsizer contributions from the sale, or just looking for guidance, we can help. Come speak with us.

Taking Advantage of Free Marketing With Blogging

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To gain a foothold in the online community, it is becoming more and more important that small businesses take advantage of and develop a web presence that they can use to engage and communicate with their customers.

Blogs are among the primary three forms of media used in most content strategies today. By consistently using blogging as a tool for building your business’s online brand and raising awareness, you’re using a cost-effective method of content creation and directing more traffic towards your website. Doing so also enables you to provide your target audience with relevant content that they might find helpful and establish yourself in a niche as an authority.

Reportedly, 89% of content marketers used blog posts in their content creation strategy in 2020. It’s a marketing strategy that over 86% of companies are employing as their primary form of online marketing distribution.

Here are some reasons why you should consider employing blogging as your next marketing move.

Search Engine Optimisation Boost

Blogging allows you to provide search engines with fresh, relevant content straightforwardly and cost-effectively. When you create content through a blog post for your business, you’re providing major search engines with new content to refer back to in search results. You can also insert keywords that pertain to your business into your content that you know your customers use to search for what you’re offering them, and which will then flag your blog in their search results.

Strengthen Relationships With Customer Base (Old And New)

Engaging with your customers is an element of online marketing that you do not want to neglect, as they have the power to make or break your business. Blogging allows you to engage and connect with your customer base informally and builds up trust between you and them as a reliable source of high-quality and particularly relevant information.

Make Your Business The Industry Leader In Information

By providing your customer base with trusted, high-quality information that you know they’ll find relevant, you can establish credibility for your business and yourself as a “knowledge expert” in the field or niche you’ve carved out for yourself. Writing regularly about helpful and informative topics will make you the point of call within the industry, leading to more inquiries and higher conversion rates (clickthroughs, purchases, etc.).

Connect People To Your Brand

Blog posting allows you a more informal, conversational platform to create a dialogue with your customers and show them a more personal side to your business. You can establish a brand message and voice, engage existing and prospective customers, and show them a sense of your business’s corporate standard, character, vision, and personality.

Create Opportunities For Sharing

Sharing the link to your blog is something that your customers who engage with your content can do, which creates the potential for viral traffic and exponential growth in the market. It’s free and as easy as a simple click.

Blogging is essentially a must for any small business looking to increase its outreach into the digital landscape. Suppose you don’t have the time, resources or necessary expertise to write blog content. In that case, you can outsource the posts to a digital marketing agency and have them begin your company’s blogging journey.