#Hornsby Accountant#Hornsby Tax#Hornby Business

Have you paid for external training for your employees? If so, you may be eligible for the skills and training boost from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

 As a small business with a turnover of less than $50 million, you can claim an additional 20% bonus tax deduction for expenses incurred on training new and existing employees.

 This covers external training courses your employees undertake, either in person or online. The training must be provided by a registered external training provider.

As a business owner, you know that keeping records can save you time, hassle and money in the long run. But there might be some records you haven’t thought about.

 For tax purposes, you should keep record of your income, expenses, profits or losses. This means keeping your invoices, receipts, bank statements, payroll records and ledgers.

 Alongside your financial records, here are four more areas you should keep track of:

 * Inventory, including available stock and purchase orders.

Draft legislation to regulate the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) system has been released for public consultation.

 BNPL is estimated to add as much as $18.4 billion to Australia’s GDP and supports more than 120,000 jobs according to the Australian Finance Industry Association.

 However, it is not subject to the regulatory framework that governs other credit products. The draft legislation amends the law to align BNPL with other types of credit.

How well do you know the new workplace laws? The Fair Work Ombudsman says business owners must brush up on their knowledge of the changes made to the workplace laws with the Closing Loopholes bill that passed in December.

 The new laws, which cover gig work, casual employment and the right to disconnect, come into effect on various dates in 2024 and into 2025.

 * Changes to the definition of casual employment come into effect on 26 August

 * The new minimum standard for gig workers comes into effect on 26 August

The monthly consumer price index (CPI) for the 12 months to January was 3.4%, the same as December 2023, which was the lowest inflation reading since November 2021, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

 Inflation was driven by increases in housing costs, including rents (up 7.4%), new dwelling purchases (up 4.8%) and electricity (up 0.8%).

 Other significant contributors were food and non-alcoholic beverages (up 4.4%), alcohol and tobacco (up 6.7%) and insurance and financial services (up 8.2%).

As a small business owner, you can take advantage of one of four capital gains tax (CGT) concessions offered by the Australian Tax Office.

These allow you to reduce, disregard or defer some capital gain from an active asset used in your small business.

 Eligibility

 These concessions become available when you dispose of an active asset, provided you meet certain eligibility requirements.

 First, you must be one of the following:

 

The wage price index, which measures changes in the price of labour, rose 0.9% for the December 2023 quarter, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

This was the highest quarterly increase since March 2009 and meant that average wages rose 4.2% for the whole of 2023.

Both public and private sectors saw increases, with public sector wages rising 4.3% over 2023 and private sector increasing 4.2% for the year.

This is the first time since December 2020 that the public sector has overtaken the private sector.