Do you own shares in Telstra?

In 2014 there was a Telstra share buy-back and if you participated then there are implications for your 2015 income tax return!

Any shareholders who participated in this buy-back arrangement are deemed to have sold or disposed of their shares on 6th October, 2014, and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has issued a fact sheet in relation to this for taxpayers who are residents for tax purposes and who hold their Telstra shares on capital account (ie: are subject to Capital Gains Tax (CGT)).

For each share disposed of you would have received $4.60 comprising $2.27 as a fully franked dividend and $2.33 as a capital payment – but things get a little tricky because the ATO deem you to have received a capital component of $2.77 per share – are you confused??

The capital component is allocated as proceeds on sale and is used to determine if you have a capital gain or capital loss on the sale of these shares.

If you find yourself in this arrangement, I encourage you to seek professional advice, and I would be happy to help!

If you are interested in reading the ATO fact sheet, you can do so here.

Regards

The bank reconciliation in Xero is one of my favourite features!

You can connect your Xero file to your bank account and your bank statements and transactions are able to be imported and in many cases are matched automatically to information already in your Xero file…all you need to do is click “OK”!

Some of the benefits of using the bank reconciliation feature in Xero include:

• Being able to reconcile transactions directly from your bank, this reduces data entry time and lowers the risk of errors.  You can even reconcile your PayPal or credit card account (the system also supports foreign currencies)
• Each and every day you can see exactly how much money is in your bank account – this means you can make decisions about your business transactions based on real time information
• By using the App. you can be reconciling your bank account while out for coffee or sitting in bed in the morning (Xero is supported for Mac, PC, tablet and phone)
• Xero is able to match transactions based on amounts, names and reference numbers, but the real beauty is being able to create rules to automatically allocate transactions (ie: fuel purchases, postage, insurance), this is particularly helpful for repeating transactions!

All in all, I find the Bank Reconciliation process to be one of the big time savers with Xero – if you’d like to see this in action or have further queries, please contact me!

Regards

Frivolous Friday is here again and I thought I’d share my experience meeting Sadhana Smiles.

With thanks to Leadership Great South Coast and Telstra, Sadhana appeared at Warrnambool’s Lighthouse Theatre this week as part of the Great South Coast Small Business Festival.

You can read about Sadhana’s achievements here…

I embrace any chance I can to hear inspirational women speak, and the things I took from Sadhana’s presentation relate to:

• having courage, determination and self-belief
• being street smart and disruptive
• creating a plan for life
• investing in yourself and thinking of your brand
• give people a compelling reason to say yes to you
• do the right thing by yourself and you’ll do the right thing by others, and
• give back!

However there was one opinion in regards to gender specific networking that I feel I need to challenge.  Sadhana indicated that the concept of gender specific networking was not sustainable – I have to disagree!

While I fully support mixed gender networking, I know there are many women who do not feel comfortable in those situations and many close themselves off from the experience.  Since being involved with Business in Heels, I have witnessed first hand how women who may be less confident have grown and advanced beyond their expectations or wildest dreams – and that is the reason there will always be a place for gender specific, and in particular women only, networking events!

Regards

Did you know that last year the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) cross referenced the information provided in individual income tax returns with over 600 million transactions provided by third parties?

This cross referencing was used to identify if income or capital gains had been omitted from income tax returns, and to ensure offsets were claimed correctly and exemptions from surcharges were correctly applied.

In doing so they contacted almost 400,000 taxpayers who appeared to have discrepancies between the information they reported and that of the third parties – and in most cases the result required a repayment of money to the ATO and the cause was the taxpayer not providing ALL of their information to their tax agent…

With the advances of technology and increased reporting requirements, the amount of data being matched by the ATO is going to rise – their focus is extending beyond omitted interest and employment income to areas including capital gains on the sale of shares and property and employment related foreign source income.

I hope that by hi-lighting this process, you will all appreciate the importance of good record keeping, and if you feel you may be lacking in this area…now is the time to learn more…

Regards