Just our friendly reminder that its BAS time again for those on a quarterly cycle.  Do you always find it stressful finding the money to pay your BAS?  TIP:  Open a Cash Management Account with your bank, and each week, put aside 10% of your sales plus whatever percentage your PAYGI require, and any PAYGW incurred as well.  When it comes time to pay the BAS, all you need to do is take a look in your CMA at it should all be there ready to go.  It won't even hurt as much!  September BAS is due at the end of October.

Have you hired people with their own ABN and think you don't have to pay them super?

You could be one of many who think that just because an employee has an ABN and invoices you, that you get out of your employer responsibilities like paying their superannuation and covering them for worker's compensation.

It is very important to understand the difference between an employee and a contractor, and if you are uncertain, its best you find out.  This calculator will help you identify whether you have an employer/employee relationship or not.  

Australia has the most complex set of employment laws in the world, and this law is no exception.  There are a myriad of 'tests' with a number of 'exceptions' that apply to this law, and it can get very confusing.  Put simply however, if the person you have 'employed' or 'engaged' works only for you, does not employ other people to carry out their work, uses your tools (or even some of their own) and is not at liberty to make their own decisions as to how and when they do their work, then the chances are; you have an employee and you need to pay their superannuation and cover them for workers compensation.

The ATO are cracking down on this law.  Don't be caught out.  Give me a call if you need help in determining your liabilities.

None of us want to pay tax on something we don’t have to, right? 

It helps to know what you can and can’t claim for your business. 
And of course, it all depends on what you do, as to what you can claim. 
For instance, if you run a hairdressing salon, and you decide to take a course in driving an excavator, then you won’t be able to claim those education expenses. 
However, if you take a course in learning the latest hair styles, then that would be claimable.
Knowing what does attract GST and doesn’t is also worth knowing. 
For instance:

• vehicle registration doesn’t have any GST,
• you can’t claim GST on entertainment expenses and
• insurance expenses often consist of a component of which you can’t claim GST. 

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Remember to keep all your receipts if you want to claim the expense.

Receipt Bank is a great way to capture all your receipts on the go without losing them having to worry about them fading. 
There are also some great cheap scanning apps for your phone which allow you to do a similar thing and link them directly to your Xero account. 
Using the Rules function is Xero means that you can code all your regular expenses just once, and let the system do the rest from now on.
If you don't know what I am talking about, I can help you with some one to one training to get you up to speed on your online bookkeeping system.
​Contact me, I'm here to help.