What I have noticed in the past 4 years is that business people, and new start-ups especially are very confused about taxes. In particular, how much will they be paying and the biggest downfall, not including those figures in their cashflow and budgets.
The topic of taxes cannot be fit into one simple manual. There is a lot of legislation and finer detail but I would like to explain it so that it may you help you in instantly in very SIMPLE terms.
The 3 Taxes you MUST to get your head around.
GST – Your business will be providing GOODS and SERVICES. Once you have exceeded the threshold you will HAVE to charge 10% GST on top of your Sales. This GST you charge extra IS NOT YOURS. It belongs to the Australian Taxation Office. Yes, you can claim GST offsets from the purchases of goods and services that you buy to run your business, so your Business Activity Statement will claim these. HOWEVER, in my opinion the best approach is to set aside that 10% you have charged in another bank account or at least in your mind. Do not count this is an income or turnover for your business.
PAYG – Withholding. I like to call this WAGES tax, because once you have employees then this is the tax your take out of their GROSS pay. Again, this is not your money. You are withholding this on behalf of the Australian Taxation Office. It is part of the employee’s earnings and you are required to remit it to the ATO. The Wages you pay your employees is a tax deduction. The Gross Wages i.e. the Net Pay you pay them plus the PAYG Withholding will show as an Expense on your Profit & Loss Report. This expense should be used in your cashflow calculations and assist you in determining how much profit you will make.
PAYG – I. Income Tax Payable. It will depend on the structure of your business. You may be a sole trader, a partnership or a Company. The structure changes how the Income Tax is calculated and when it is payable. However, this tax should never be forgotten. Just when you think you have paid all of your taxes this one gets you at the end. What ever your NET PROFIT is, which will be your Gross Income Less all of your Tax-Deductible Expenses then that NET PROFIT will be taxed for Income Tax Purposes. For example, a company makes $500,000 in turnover less Expenses of $300,000. The Net Profit is $200,000. The Company tax rate (for this exercise) is 30%. You will need to pay income tax of $60,000 for the year.
These taxes are reported to the Australian Taxation Office in your Business Activity Statements either quarterly or monthly. You are required to pay them as they are lodged. Not budgeting or including them in your outgoing cash flows is a mistake that can take a long time to recover from. Spending that money on personal items is a common occurrence and then the debt falls due with nowhere to source the funds from.
Taxes, don’t forget about them. When you start a business make sure you factor them in.
By Rosemarie Horan
I had never imagined that in my lifetime I would see and suffer, along with the world, a nightmarish crisis on an alarming global scale. Our very dreams and freedom have been taken from us with the closure of our restaurants, clubs, gyms, casinos, sports all taking a major blow.
I pray and hope that all Australians find the resilience and toughness to endure the effects of this Coronavirus so that once again we can live the lives we have built in a country which we hold dear. Coming from an Italian immigrant background it breaks my heart to see a passionate country like Italy to its knees. Australians please band together and do what is necessary to survive this unforgiving disease.
iGrow Business Services provides bookkeeping and BAS agent services for its clients. Our services, so far, can remain unaffected via the use of technology and cloud accounting software. We may have to adjust the delivery of our service to you but rest assured we will keep you up to date.
Further to reading current “Economic Response to The Coronavirus” I attach summary here. My current advice is to focus on your business with these words;
Clean – we must stay healthy, that is our priority
Lean – look at all of your costs and make your business more efficient than it has ever been, but keep it alive
Current – keep your books and records Up to Date, the stimulus cash flow for employers is relying on your Activity Statement Data lodged in a timely fashion.
Let’s get through this. PLEASE CLICK ON THE GREEN LINK BELOW TO ACCESS INFORMATION ON CASH BOOSTS FOR EMPLOYERS.
Kind Regards,
Rosemarie Horan
Economic Response to the Coronavirus
Who are you? You are unique, that’s who, but you are also a small business owner. One of the special ones in the 2 million plus small business that contribute to Australia’s diversity and independent way of life.
Sunday, the first day of the week, but for most it feels like the last day in that wonderful weekend you worked and waited so long for to arrive. Now your mind is starting to fill with the hundreds of tasks that await you this week.
• Raise your sales invoices
• enter the timesheets
• check your marketing schedule
• Turn up to that networking event
• order new uniforms
• pay the suppliers
• order the stock
• attend to that pesky H.R. issue
A small business owner especially in the early years will find it hard to relax and spend their Sunday doing what they love when they know on Monday the cyclone begins. What would you rather be doing on Sunday?
Sophie wants to sleep in, like all day, she spent 60 plus hours last week making coffee and cronuts for her customers at her Food Van. Bad luck Sophie, better get to that paperwork to organize your orders next week.
Andrew, self -employed plumber, wants to go to The Royal Hotel with his mates and see that live band. His mates don’t have a small business, they will probably chuck a sickie tomorrow. Andrew needs to clean out his van and replenish the stock, then his week will run more smoothly.
Having a bookkeeper may not give you your Sundays back but systems and processes can streamline your business and get you on track. It is not the bookkeeping (things like paying the bills and lodgement of the BAS) that will turn your small business into a smooth-running machine, but the development of efficiencies and ideas to have you continually improving.
If your accounts are behind, then you cannot find the information that you desperately need to help you move forward. For example, when are Sophie’s peak periods? What are her staff costing her? Can she use junior staff at certain times or less staff at certain times? What hours are they legally allowed to work for? What costs are on top of those hourly rates? Did Sophie forget to add superannuation and the cost of holidays onto her hourly rates? How much do those paper cups cost? Are her competitors using better coffee? If so, how much does it cost?
Sophie should be spending her time on these questions and answers, finding new strategies and promotions for her business. She can employee qualified people around her such as Accountants and Bookkeepers to do the other compliance tasks. Have those accounts up to date at all times and then have a good conversation with your bookkeeper. Sometimes it is just as simple as a conversation to spark an idea that catalyzes into a great business idea.
If you are a Service business, then it is highly likely your cash flow will be poor if you leave your Sales invoicing to a weekly or monthly event. It would be way better to create an instant or regular method of invoicing your customers, so the payments come in faster.
If you want to sleep a little longer on Sunday like Sophie, then look for a good bookkeeper, they should help you achieve far more than you could on your own.
Do yourself a favour and get one that is qualified.
Check out iGrow Business Services – “Growing Your Business with Better Books”
It’s the first Wednesday in November, anywhere in Australia. What are you doing that day? Are you counting your winnings from the Melbourne Cup? Perhaps you are sporting a wee hangover from the extended lunch you and your mates had up at the The Royal Hotel?
Things got a bit out of hand when Davo won the trifecta and then shouted the bar, then his Missus showed up and dragged him out. “Not on a school night, Davo” she says, dragging him past the rowdy mob still drinking up real fast, like it’s the last beer on earth.
Small business owners beware, just like Anzac Day, Queen’s Birthday and all the other myriad of Public Holidays we have in this great land of Oz it will affect your business in some way. You may lose time, you may be down a few staff, you may lose chargeable hours, you don’t however want to be the last horse in the race, ever.
Whether it be post-race hangover or just plain tired, doing your bookkeeping without a clear head can lead to mistakes. Mistakes that cost you money. When you raise those invoices, have you covered all of your costs in that job? Have you allowed for all of your labour time and your materials, have you allowed sufficient markup to make a decent profit? Whack that GST on top and then still come in at a reasonable price so the customer does not think you ripped them off?
Davo is a lucky bastard, you might not think so, but his missus is a Bookkeeper. She keeps Davo in line in many ways. Not only does she see that he gets to bed at an early hour but she keeps a finger (well all them) on the pulse of his business. She uses cloud accounting software. Davo does the hard yakka and she emails those invoices out pronto. Mrs Davo tracks the GST on all the Sales. She swears at Johhny Howard every day but she transfers 1/11th of all Davo’s hard labours to their GST Savings Account. If she doesn’t do that she knows The Royal Hotel will increase their takings by at 10%.
Mrs Davo pays all the boys their wages, she has the Single Touch Payroll all stitched up like the tea cosy at the country fair. 9.5% super, no worries she says, it’s a cinch to pull a report out and submit the payment to the government.
Mrs Davo is a bonza bookkeeper, keeping up to date with all the latest information and red tape. Cross Counter won the Melbourne Cup in 2018. The horse came from behind but it had all it’s bases covered. Be like Cross Counter, have a bookkeeper count the things that matter. Make sure your bookkeeper is experienced like Mrs Davo, then you will be one of the frontrunners in the field, maybe even put your nose first to that winning post.
PAYG Withholding Tax. We have all seen this right? On our payslips, taking away our hard earned cash! This is your contribution to society, you are the water flowing into the pond. iGrow explains the basics and how this tax is calculated so that you know you are paying the right amount.
Registered Employers help their payees meet their end of year tax liabilities by collecting PAYG withholding from their pay. It is deducted from payments made to employees, other workers such as contractors (with voluntary agreements) and businesses that don’t quote their Australian Business number (ABN).
From the Employer’s perspective the due dates for paying and reporting withheld amounts depend on whether you are a small, medium or large withholder.
Small > withholds $25,000 or less a year, pays and reports amounts quarterly
Medium > withholds $25,001 to $1 million a year, pays and reports withholding amounts to ATO monthly
Large > an individual or business that withheld amounts total more than $1 million in previous year, amounts are withheld are paid and sent twice a week.
The employer is responsible for submitting these payments and reports on time.
Your employer will likely have a software system including Xero, Quickbooks, Reckon or MYOB that will automatically calculate the correct tax on your pay.
The attached current table lists the rates of tax on earnings (for Australian Residents);
Here is also a link to the weekly tax calculator;
https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/weekly-tax-table/?=top_10_rates
Of course these things can become more complicated with the involvement of HECS debt, termination payments, salary sacrifice etc.
Ideally your PAYG tax taken will be sufficient so that when you lodge your income tax return you will not have to pay any further tax. If you have income from other sources that has not been taxed then it is a good idea to speak to your Accountant to see how much more water your will have to put into the pond or find some other mechanism to save on your tax.
iGrow Business Services is a Registered BAS Agent 25689866
The information/advice provided on this website is general advice only. It has been prepared without taking into account any of your individual objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on this advice you should consider the appropriateness of the advice, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs.
Income Tax, Payroll Tax, PAYG Tax, Land Tax and Goods and Services Tax all sticky strands in the web of business, iGrow just wants to make sure you stay on track and don’t land in the middle of the web and can’t get out.
John Howard declared that he would “never, ever” bring in the GST but here we are in 2018 with most small businesses operating under the GST regime that his government brought in on 1st July, 2000. The GST is a broad based tax of 10% on most goods and services and other items sold or consumed in Australia.
There are basic rule requirements for a small business to be registered for GST, number one being if your business has a GST turnover of $75,000 (Gross Income minus GST) then you need to be registered. Most goods and services are required to have a GST component with exemptions for items such as basic food, healthcare, some medicines, some child care, education courses and precious metals to name a few.
The GST portion of your Sales is your little gift to the ATO (the spider in the web). When you make a taxable sale of more than $82.50 (gst incl) your GST registered customers need a tax invoice from you to be able to claim a credit for GST in the purchase price.
Keeping Track
Modern day accounting software (QBO, Xero, Reckon, MYOB) can alleviate the pain of keeping track of the GST on your Sales and GST credits on your Purchases.
Each time you make a sale 1/11th of that Sale is for our friendly spider, however the business is able to claim back GST credits on the purchases it makes solely or partly for the business.
To be able to claim back those credits you also need to ensure that;
At BAS time you will submit your Activity Statement and pay to the tax office the sum of the results of these transactions.
iGrow does not want your business to get caught by ignoring the cash flow issues and that is created by not planning for this GST event.
Read this simple scenario to get a clear picture;
Chloe owns a Garden Centre.
Chloe sells a plant for $50 plus GST i.e. Total Sale $55
Chloe purchased the plant for $10 plus GST i.e. Total Purchase $11
She owes the ATO $4 in this transaction. Chloe banks her $44 profit and spends it on herself and her children. It’s only $4 you say? But these add up!
A simple and effective way of keeping your business on track is to set aside the GST from each transaction (on a weekly/monthly basis). Accounting software can easily pull this information for you.
The team at iGrow can assist you in monitoring your business to ensure you are compliant and up to date.
Don’t let a little thing like GST have you marching towards the spider.
iGrow Business Services is a Registered BAS Agent 25689866
The information/advice provided on this website is general advice only. It has been prepared without taking into account any of your individual objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on this advice you should consider the appropriateness of the advice, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs.
At iGrow we love gardens, we like to see things flourish, think of your business’ balance sheet in terms of this beautiful strawberry plant.
ASSETS
The pots, soil and the plants are the assets. Items required in your business to allow it to grow and bear fruit, things like cash, debtors and equipment, without these things you do not have the fundamentals for successful results.
Picture this: your business is underway and all of a sudden you’re immersed into the highs and lows that come with a start-up. First things first, you’ve pinned down your priorities on the wall; Networking. Contacting prospective clients. Building rapport with existing clients. Check, check, check! However, resting silently on your desk with its devious gleam, is that growing pile of invoices waiting patiently to be noticed.
No matter the size, a business can face a number of problems during its decision making process; this process can be crucial to its survival and productivity.
Adopting a decision means choosing between different alternatives. A decision can be interpreted as choosing between different ways of action. Here are the different stages of the decision-making
process, that you can use to help make better decisions:
When dealing with the finances of a company, extra caution needs to be taken as the business’ success can drop from 100 to 0 very quickly if something goes wrong in the
accounting processes and within the accounting firm.
Watch out for these areas of vulnerability in order to maintain financial safety and governance.
