By: Steve Burnham From 1 July 2018 the ATO says it will not apply penalties to tax returns and activity statements where your clients have made an inadvertent error by failing to take reasonable care or due to the fact that they have not taken a “reasonably arguable” position (more below). It says that if it […]
By Melissa Browne Unless you are living under a rock, most of us have heard of the term cryptocurrency or, at the very least, Bitcoin. If you haven’t, cryptocurrency is generally used to describe a digital asset in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of additional units and verify transactions on the blockchain. Not […]
By: Dominic Powell It’s no secret that tax time can be one of the most painful times of the year for business owners, with a seemingly ever-changing list of things on the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO) hitlist and numerous concessions and deductions to keep in mind. To help out, the ATO has released a short list […]
By: Steve Burnham Assistant Commissioner Kath Anderson has announced that the ATO is particularly concerned about taxpayers either making mistakes or deliberately lodging false claims in relation to work-related car expenses over tax time 2018. “Last year around 3.5 million people made a work-related car expense claims, and together they totalled about $8.8 billion,” Anderson says. “Now […]
By Steve Burnham A question was asked of the ATO recently, via its “ATO Community” webpage (find out more about that here) that centred on the viability of deeming bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) as a personal use asset. The follow-up portions of the question of bitcoin as a personal use asset were as follows: Does a […]
The ATO has recently published information on its use of “e-Audit” technology, which it has begun to use as part of its tax compliance push. An e-Audit is carried out via technology that tests files stored in a taxpayer’s electronic records, which can verify if the stored data is accurate and complete. If a […]
By Steve Burnham Now and then the ATO issues guidances on how its general anti-avoidance legislation can apply to professional firms that allocate profits to individual professional practitioners with proprietorship in the firm. Firms potentially affected include those providing services in the accounting, architectural, engineering, financial services, legal and medical professions and many more. Guidelines […]
By: Rod Myer Claiming back lost super held by the Australian Taxation Office could add $4200 to your retirement savings, according to new research. Research house Rice Warner has found that the amount of lost super ending up with the ATO – where it only earns the inflation rate – is growing because the maximum size of the inactive […]
Statistics supplied by the ATO indicate that most GST refund claims (98% of them according to its data) are processed without any problem, but the ATO also says that every year it will select a small proportion of BAS refunds and temporarily hold onto them to check the accuracy of the information provided. If […]
The obscure deductibility gem alluded to in this article’s headline is in fact true. It was about 1990 when the ATO was asked about the tax deductibility of interest on a loan a business may have taken out to repay a tax debt. Borrowed money to pay your business tax debt? It was the […]
