If you are a small business owner and you want to keep up to date with tax and super news – here is a solution for you.

Of course I share plenty of news right here on The Tax Chic, but you may also like to subscribe to the Small Business Newsroom that is operated by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Simply head on over to www.ato.gov.au/sbnews and click on “Subscribe”, enter your email address and confirm your subscription.

Here you can join other small business in keeping up to date and the information will be delivered direct to your inbox.

You can thank me later…

Regards

So many businesses these days use computerised software for processing their wages – which is great!

But this also means that we leave it up to the software to calculate the amount of Pay As You Go Withholding to retain from an employees wages.

If you want to check the accuracy of your software, or perhaps you are an employee who wants to calculate the impact of a pay rise – you should take a look at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) Tax Tables, you’ll find them here.

You can choose to print the table you need and then use it to look up the relevant figures, or you can the online tax calculator.

Whichever method you use, please ensure you read the instructions carefully, and fully consider the personal circumstances of the calculation you are estimating because there are many different options!

Regards

It seems that love is in the air in my family – starting this weekend, and following over the coming six or so months, five of my cousins are getting married, and another one is still to set a date… (JD if you’re reading this I consider you to be my cousin…just for the record x)

It got me thinking about the impact on the economy that weddings have.

There’s invitations, venue hire, catering including ‘the cake’, dresses and suits , car hire, celebrant fees and flowers just to start.

As a guest I usually buy a new outfit and of course a present, and for some of these weddings there’ll be air travel, car hire, accommodation and all the other costs you incur while being away from home.

All of these things contribute to the GDP (gross domestic product) of our economy and there are many businesses, both large and small, who make their living solely on the back bone of weddings!

I don’t have any figures on the amount spent on weddings each year, I was too scared to look, but a quick look through the social pages of the newspaper and online will give you an idea of how many weddings are held every weekend and I’m sure you know from your own experience of either getting married or being a guest just how much money passes through the chain at the mention of a wedding.

So, best wishes to the upcoming brides and congratulations to their grooms – and to all the guests, have fun!

Regards

The month of August is Small Business Month here in Victoria, and I wanted to share my top “practical” tips on running a home based business.

These tips are not linked to the tax impact of running your business from home (you should contact me if you want to know more about this), but rather the important things I have learned and implemented over the past few years of working from home.

Here is a list of 5 top tips for home based businesses:

1.  Secure your space – make sure you have a separate room to act as your office, keep it for business as much as is practical and ensure there is the ability to close the door so you can walk away from your business and back to your home at the end of the day
2. Be online – these days every business needs an online presence but with the lack of a bricks and mortar shopfront, this is particularly important for home based businesses.  More important is to be active online, it’s all about getting engagement
3. Surround yourself with like minded people – when you work from home it is easy to become isolated, there’s no “tea room chatter” or people passing your desk all the time. Join a networking group or a discussion group and make sure there is someone in your network you can call on if you need to debrief (confidentially of course)
4. Learn and improve – maintain a good appetite for learning and improving, maintaining your skills and keeping up to date with changes in your industry
5. Take time away – when you work and live in the same building, it can be easy to always be on call, make an effort to close the door of your office (see point 1 above) and switch off for the day or night or weekend – your business will benefit from it and so will you

Do you have any other tips you’d like to share? Please do…

Regards