Happiness Happens Month

August is Happiness Happens Month
We believe happiness rarely happens when you do your own bookkeeping!
Why? Small business owners spend hours and hours (often swearing) as they do their books and still stuff it up!
How is it going wrong? We have lodged (well it feels like) 6,000 BASs, so we’ll tell you what we have seen.

Trying to claim GST on offshore purchases. The hotel you stayed in while you were in New York – it’s not registered for Australian GST, so you can’t claim any.
Claiming GST on other forms of tax like council rates, car registration and your ASIC annual fee. Typically there is no tax on another form of taxation.
Claiming GST on the offshore manufacturing of your products. This is tricky to code correctly. When you pay the manufacturer there is no GST, you pay it to the shipping company when it arrives in Australia. You will also need to pay them for the shipping, some of which is subject to GST and some not. We’ve never seen anyone successfully process these transactions on their own.
Paying workers – there are 2 ways. Either they are an employee and you pay them wages (following all the correct fair work procedures) or they are an independant contractor and issue you with a valid tax invoice, with a legit ABN and it’s up to you to check that it is legit BEFORE you make payment. You can’t just make it rain money! And the ATO is now clamping down on the tax deductibility of incorrect and/or untaxed payments.

Spread happiness this August, who do you know that is doing their own bookkeeping and is unhappy about it? Contact us – we like to sprinkle happiness wherever we go!

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