What happens when an employee needs to attend the funeral of an immediate family member while they are on annual leave?

To answer this we need to ask, “If the employee was not on annual leave, would they be entitled to compassionate leave?”

If the answer is yes, then the relevant days of annual leave must be re-credited to the employee for future use, and the time should be recorded as compassionate leave.

The Fair Work Act provides for two days of paid compassionate leave to an employee when a member of their immediate family passes away or contracts an illness or injury that is life threatening.

Immediate family includes a spouse, de facto partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent or grandchild of an employee, or a child, parent, grandparent, grandchild or sibling of a souse or de facto partner of an employee – including step family and adoptive family.

You can read more here.

Regards

Where in the world IS The Tax Chic?

As The Tax Chic, I’m located in Australia and work out of an office in my home in South West Victoria.

The beauty of the internet though, allows me to connect and work with individuals and businesses from across Australia.

I love being able to help Australian taxpayers (and even a few non-residents across the ditch in New Zealand), attend to their taxation obligations. It’s even better when they don’t have to leave the house!

The Stryke Tax App I use allows you to submit all of your taxation documentation safely through their channels and into my secure (two step authentication required to access) tax program – recent users of the App have commented:

• Wow what a great app. Done already! 
• Appreciate all your help and it being such a smooth, easy process! I’ll be recommending you to family + friends

So regardless of where you are, you too can benefit from the wisdom of The Tax Chic in my regional location.

I know you want to try it – just Contact me to explain how!

Regards

The Spring Racing Carnival is in full swing, and at present Melbourne is alight with frocks and fillies!

I love seeing the colours of the carnival, and am always looking out for my favourite outfits of the day.

I am a traditionalist at heart and appreciate black and white for Derby Day, structured colour on Melbourne Cup Day and flirty florals on Oaks Day.

But most importantly, my dressing tips include: never leave home without a cover-up of some sort (think jacket or wrap), and always (always) leave your shoes on!

Now what about the numbers?

In 2016 the Melbourne Cup Carnival injected a record breaking $427.1 million into the Victorian economy – that’s a lot of dresses, fascinators and bets!

As interested in numbers as I am, I went in search of some statistics for 2017 to share with you, and here is what I found:

45,000 – estimated number of bottles of champers to be opened

10,000 – estimated number of oysters to be shucked at the Melbourne Cup

305,000 – estimated number of beer units punters will enjoy

75,000 – estimated number of chicken sandwiches to be served  by caterers

100,000 – estimated number of nibble pies (AKA party pies) to be served

I think that covers the important stuff – now if anyone can send me a number for a winning horse in the remainder of the carnival, that would be much appreciated!

Regards

Thanks to Melanie Dinjaski for the stats.

There’s a bit of “girl power” and cause for celebration happening in my world this week – are you intrigued?

Before I explain, can you cast your mind back to January of 1996?  At that time, my family helped me pack all my worldly belongings into two cars and we travelled the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs for me to start my very first full time Graduate Accountant job – I was 21 years old.

I have strong memories of my dear Mum suggesting that one day I would move back home and open an accounting firm for women.  At the time I thought she was dreaming, but now I can see that she was in fact onto something!

We all know that The Tax Chic is built on the premise of “Connecting Women with Numbers”, and while I am very proud to also provide my accounting expertise to many male clients, it is when lovely women approach me with their entrepreneurial ideas that I get very excited.

And so now to the girl power and celebrating – a good friend and I often get together and ‘solve the problems of the world’, usually over a glass of vino – but a few weeks ago a business idea was born and we have been keen to take some steps forward with it.

As we were busy prepping our preliminary notes, I happened to come across a business accelerator program in the Women’s Agenda newsletter – two weeks down and we have now proudly submit our application to said program and we wait with baited breath to see if we are one of the successful ideas.

This particular program is designed for female start up entrepreneurs in the tech space and is designed for women, like my friend and I, who have great ideas (and business prowess!), but no tech knowhow to make it happen.

I know that if my Mum was here today, she’d be proud – not only of me, but of ALL women out there making things happen.  As the saying goes you’ve got to be in it to win it and that is cause for celebration in my world this week.

By the way, if there’s something you think you might want to have a go at, don’t sit back and dream – just do it!

Regards