Penalty relief for taxpayers

From 1 July 2018, the Tax Office is advising Australians that if they find an error in their tax return or activity statement they will not incur a penalty but will advise of the error and how to get it right next time. Penalty relief will only apply to eligible taxpayers or entities (i.e., turnover…

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Building a solid startup

It is no secret that most startups will fail in their first three years of operation, so building a new business that can not only survive but thrive in the face of a challenge is of the utmost importance. Ensuring your business is strong enough to move past any inevitable hitches that come its way…

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ASIC’s view on SMSFs as ‘one-stop property shops’

The Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC) has released a new report highlighting its view on the setup of SMSFs for property investments using ‘one-stop shop’ models. ‘One-stop shop models’ tend to promote the purchase of residential property through SMSF borrowing. They are usually arranged by groups of real estate agents, developers, mortgage brokers, financial advisers…

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Avoid these five common Tax Time mistakes

Tax Time is now upon us, with the ATO Assistant Commissioner announcing the top five mistakes commonly made when Australians complete their annual tax returns. Common mistakes some taxpayers are making include: – Leaving out a portion of their earnings, i.e., forgetting to include a job – income from a temp job, or income earned…

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ATO advice for SMSF members with a market-linked pension

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has recently been made aware of circumstances where a member of a SMSF commences a new market-linked pension and unintentionally exceeds their transfer balance cap. An individual may have exceeded their transfer balance cap if they were receiving a life expectancy or market-linked pension just before 1 July 2017 (which…

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Personal Income Tax Plan passed

The Personal Income Tax Plan announced as part of this year’s Federal Budget has been passed by Parliament. The plan introduces: – a new low and middle-income tax offset to reduce the tax payable by low and middle-income earners in the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 income years – a new low-income tax offset from…

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Communicating effectively with difficult people

Working with unreasonable people is inevitable for most individuals at some point in their careers. Whether it is an unhappy customer, difficult colleague or uncompromising community member – chances are you will encounter at least one of these situations. Unfortunately, there is no crash course in dealing with difficult people, but by applying some basic…

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SMSFs: reporting change

Self-managed super funds (SMSFs) are required to provide an accumulation phase value (APV) on their transfer balance account report for 30 June 2017 in certain circumstances. SMSFs should note, APV is often different to the account balance of the SMSF member’s accumulation phase assets. This is due to the exit and administration fees and realisation…

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