April is just around the corner – will you be Grateful in April?

At our most recent Business in Heels – South West Victoria event we heard from a representative of the m.a.d woman foundation and our lovely members dug deep into their pockets to help support the amazing work the foundation does.

As I was poking around their website, I found that in 2016 the foundation ran a promotion called Grateful in April and I decided it would be a great thing to participate in.

The founder and CEO of the m.a.d woman foundation, Melina Schamroth, tells me that Grateful in April is continuing in 2017 (the team are just putting some final touches on the promotion).

So if you too are interested in being Grateful in April, register here and share your “gratefulness” over on our Facebook page!

Regards

Is it time to re-evaluate your career, or your business or perhaps your goals?

Every now and then it is a great idea to take stock of where you are in your career or your business or in relation to your goals and I encourage this practice whole-heartedly.

We need to regularly review in order to make adjustments (if required) and to set new targets as we move forward – there’s no fun in standing still.

So, what holds us back from aiming high and really going for change?  Usually it is fear…does this resonate with you?

Yesterday I had lunch with Nicole Kidman (the real one – of course I wasn’t the only one there, I shared lunch with about 1500 of my closest friends and I’ll share more about this event at a later stage), but one of the comments Nicole made was “Find courage by not over-thinking things as you can always talk yourself out of doing something.  If you try and it doesn’t work, you can always get back up”

Let’s stop over-thinking things, let’s talk ourselves into trying and let’s help each other to get back up if we fall.

Regards

There are some people around who will take a tax deduction even when one might reasonably expect it is not allowed.

These same people will usually try to justify the tax deduction when asked, but many times this so called ‘justification’ is far reaching.

One of these common deductions is claiming 5,000 kilometres of motor vehicle travel – 5,000 is actually a long way and it is difficult to substantiate when you job is primarily based in an office.

One taxpayer recently tried this on the basis that they were required to transport sensitive information to and from work and thus claimed the 5,000 kilometres.

The snag was that the sensitive information he was carrying related to his own personal design work and was not at all related to his paid employment, and his employer never asked him to transport any sensitive information between his workplace and home.

The result – deduction denied and 25% administrative penalty imposed.

The lesson – be careful, and make sure you do the right thing!

Regards

Recent cases in the Federal Court have confirmed that any form of ride sourcing (like Uber for example), is considered ‘taxi travel’ when it comes to applying the laws of GST (the Goods and Services tax). The importance behind this decision is that the GST laws are a little different for taxi operators than they are for other businesses in terms of registration.

The result of this decision means that any driver who earns or supplements their income by providing rides will be considered a ride sourcing enterprise and will need to*:

• keep records
• have an ABN (Australian Business Number)
• register for GST (regardless of how much they earn)
• pay GST on the full fare received from passengers for each trip they provide
• lodge activity statements
• include income from ride sourcing in their income tax returns

So if you’re planning on providing ride sourcing, please speak with me about your responsibilities and obligations BEFORE you start – there’s nothing worse than being caught out doing the ‘wrong’ thing at a later point…

Regards

*list provided by NTAA The Tax Advisers’ Voice