5 ways business owners can accidentally trigger a tax audit
It all starts with a notice from the ATO You are busy running your business, juggling the day-to-day and keeping busy with customers, employees and back-end work. Out of the blue, you receive a letter from the ATO telling you that an audit of your company and business operations has been completed. At the end of the letter, you find a full-course […]
Challenge an ATO decision
Challenge an ATO decision An ATO decision stands until someone displaces it, and that someone is you. A notice has arrived from the ATO with a number on it you don’t accept. Disagreeing isn’t enough on its own: an assessment is treated as correct until you show that it isn’t, inside a window that is […]
Respond to a Director Penalty Notice
Respond to a Director Penalty Notice A company tax debt has just become your debt, and the clock is running. The notice in your hand moves your company’s unpaid PAYG, GST or superannuation onto you personally. Which of your options survive depends on the type of notice and on 21 days that started running when […]
Respond to an ATO review or audit
Respond to an ATO review or audit The ATO is asking you to account for decisions you made years ago. Four years ago you and your accountant treated a transaction a particular way. A letter has now arrived asking you to explain it, and what you can show is whatever you happened to keep at […]
Get your personal income tax position right
Get your personal income tax position right We will make sure you pay what you owe, and that you can show why that is the right number. Most people with a complicated tax return did not set out to have one. It accumulated. A rental property, some shares, a family trust distribution, a redundancy payment, […]
Structure an expansion offshore
Structure an expansion offshore We will design the offshore structure before you commit, because unwinding one afterwards is far more expensive. When you take a business offshore, Australia’s tax rules do not stay behind. A set of provisions exists specifically to tax income earned through foreign entities you control. The controlled foreign company rules, transfer […]
Check the tax before you sign a deal
Check the tax before you sign a deal We will tell you what a deal costs in tax while you can still change it. Most of the tax on a transaction is decided before anyone signs anything. It is decided by what is being sold, who is selling it, and in what order the steps […]
Work out the GST on a transaction
Work out the GST on a transaction We will tell you whether GST applies, who bears it, and whether you can claim it back. GST is unusual among taxes in that most business buyers get it back. That makes the real risk a contractual one rather than a revenue one. Say a contract expresses the […]
Move income and expenses around a group of entities
Move income and expenses around a group of entities We will document the money moving inside your group so each transfer is what you intend it to be. Inside a family or business group, money moves because it is needed. One entity has cash and another has a bill. The group thinks of itself as […]
Keep on top of your business tax obligations
Keep on top of your business tax obligations We will map what your business owes, to whom, and when, so nothing falls due unnoticed. A growing business collects tax obligations faster than it collects the systems to manage them. Pay as you go withholding arrives with the first employee. GST arrives at the registration threshold. […]