It’s Valentine’s Day – a day for lovers around the world to shower one another with gifts and love and affection.

Combining two lives in a new way of being takes a lot of work, and included in that is the question of finances.

Do we put all our money together? Do we keep separate accounts? How much should we each contribute to our joint expenses?  So many things to consider…

At some stage after declaring your “coupledom”, you’ll need to consider the appropriate point in time to declare each other as a spouse in your tax return.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO), provide the following definition of “spouse”:

Your spouse includes another person (of any gender) who:

• you were in a relationship with that was registered under a prescribed state or territory law
• although not legally married to you, lived with you on a genuine domestic basis in a relationship as a couple

I’ll leave that with you to think about, although I’m sure it can wait for a day other than today – go out and enjoy your Valentine’s Day x

Regards

I tried to count how many emails I receive on average in a day, but I lost track – I’m sure this is common for many of us in this fast paced world.  So given that the recipient of any emails we send is probably in the same boat, what can we do to make our email sending more efficient?

We can THINK – it’s a concept that can be (should be?) applied to every email you send.

As you write, ask yourself:

Is it TRUE?

Is it HELPFUL?

Is it INSPIRING?

Is it NECESSARY?

Is it KIND?

See, THINK!

Have a THINK about that and let me know what you THINK!

Regards

TAKE 2 – this mornings blog post disappeared on me!

Oh goodness, the poor Australian Taxation Office (ATO) have had a rough trot of late…

Their online systems were out of action over much of the Christmas break, including the lead in, and just last week they went down again.

This puts a lot of pressure on us as Tax Agents with clients wanting to know the answers to their questions, and us wanting to provide those answers but being unable

They’re not the only ones having IT issues – I’ve noticed these blog posts not posting to Facebook and I’ve been doing so manually, but I’ve just discovered my friends on LinkedIn and Twitter have been missing out for the past three weeks too!

It seems most things with the ATO are back up and running so now I’m in catch up mode – if you’re waiting to hear from me then it certainly shouldn’t be too long and then I’ll start the task of fixing my other IT connection issues…it’s going to be a long IT related week, wish me luck!

Regards

I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate everyone who runs their own business – no matter how big or how small!

I was in one of my mind wandering states recently and was discussing (in my head) an analogy for “putting yourself out there”, and I recalled a situation when I left home at 5pm to travel two hours to attend an event where I knew no-one and then travelled two hours home again.

It was one of those times as a business owner where I had to lift myself from doubt and push myself into the right gear to get there and participate, because that is what we do.

To each and every one of you who do what needs to be done (like working 60 hours a week for yourself so you don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone else??), CONGRATULATIONS – you really do help make the world go round.

Send a shout out here to a business owner you know who needs reminding that they’re doing good, I’d love to be able to support them too.

Regards