Tax Planning Tips

Tax Planning Newsletter

With an early budget and election announced we will no doubt be swamped with various policy announcements and political promotions. In the background time is ticking away and 30 June 2016 is fast approaching.

Have you updated, or even prepared, your tax plan for the year ended 30 June 2016? The good news is that there is still a little time to develop and action a plan but time is of the essence now. If you run a business then you most likely prepared your Business Activity Statement for the quarter ended 31 March 2016. You should have 9 months of reconciled data to work with which will provide a reasonable base for extrapolated annual figures.

Tax Planning tips:

1. Have you made a Capital Gain during the year? Are there any losses you can use to offset the gain?
2. Are you expecting insurance proceeds?
3. Will you make a business purchases in the new financial year that can be brought forward?
4. Be careful when signing contracts to sell an investment as most capital gains events are based on the contract rather than settlement dates. Some clients accidentally bring forward a capital gain by confusing the two.
5. Have you made prepayments for the business?
6. Should you make superannuation contributions? Do you satisfy the tests to claim a deduction for these contributions?
7. How will you value your trading stock? This could substantially alter your cost of goods sold for the year which in turn changes your taxable income.
8. Do you have any bad debts? These need to be written off before 30 June 2016 in your internal accounting software rather than backdating transactions.
9. Have you or a connected entity received a loan from a company? There are nasty consequences if the loan isn’t treated properly.
10. Do you need to prepare a trust distribution resolution? If yes, these need to be prepared before 30 June. The legislation is very complicated so we strongly suggest that you have the resolution reviewed before 30 June if you attempt to prepare it yourself.
11. Are you planning to make a donation to a charity? Not all donations can be claimed as tax deductions. We can show you how to check if a donation will be deductable and which entity should be claiming the deduction.
12. Are you caught by the Non Commercial Loss tests?
13. Are you missing out on Research and Development grants?

And there are many more items to consider! Each client’s position is unique which makes tax and business planning exciting and rewarding. Contact us at info@krsaccountants.com for more information.

Newsletter

This newsletter includes the following interesting articles:

• Workplace wellbeing
• Online reviews
• Intellectual property
• Cultural fit
• Target markets
• Effective meetings