"Bright Accounting and Taxation Services" BiziNet™ Articles

This month I would like to talk about cybersecurity issues and financial crime in small business environments. While it may seem like small businesses are small fish for criminals, this is not always the case. In fact, small businesses are often easy targets. The major types of crimes that small businesses face in their daily operations include identity theft, stealing of private information, money laundering, and fraud.

This month, I like to talk about some details from 2021 Federal Budget. We will focus on the immediate effects, rather than deepest technical details.

• 1. Personal income tax changes
• 2. Changes affecting business taxpayers
• 3. Superannuation related changes

Property investments are always popular among Australian investors. However, the ATO is overly sensitive about claiming the correct type of expenses. Depreciation is especially important in that sense because, first of all, it is a non-cash expense, secondly, we don't have to calculate it on our side. There are quantity surveyors to do the job. Let me explain a bit further.

The Australian Taxation Office conducts various types of tax and compliance audits when it deems that a more extensive information of an issue is necessary. The complexity of these audits can be varied from a very basic question to a highly extensive investigation. Sometimes the process starts with a basic review than can lead to an audit in a later stage. In many cases, the audit period changes between 2 to 4 years, however, the ATO can go back as many years as needed, if there is a suspect of fraud or evasion.

In this edition, we are going to discuss the major small business tax concessions. Before giving the details, I like to define what a small business is, according to the ATO website.