Take a trip…and other things to do before 30 June

It’s that time of year again, when accountants start doing weird end-of-financial-year happy dances (or is that just lack of sleep and too much caffeine?) and business owners get out their labelling machines for the EOFY sales. Despite how you may feel about 30 June approaching, here’s a few things you should be doing:

Do a stocktake:

Businesses should do an annual check of physical stock to compare against your stock records. This is important for tax planning and financial reporting purposes, but also a great way to assess which stock is moving well to help you budget and plan for your product mix going forward. Ideally you should stocktake several times per year.

Buy a new business asset:

Small businesses can do an immediate write-off for new business assets under $20,000. While there is no limit to the amount of assets that you can purchase, please be very careful to not let your cash flow suffer just for the sake of a tax saving. Saving tax should never be the sole reason to buy an asset. The Government announced it’s leaving this concession in place for 2017/18 so it may be more beneficial to wait until July, talk to your accountant about the timing that’s right for you.

Take that trip:

Property investors who need to (legitimately) inspect their rental property will need to get in before 30 June if they want to claim the trip as a tax deduction. As part of the recent budget announcements, travel expenses related to inspecting, maintaining or collecting rent for a residential rental property will be disallowed from 1 July 2017.

Check your super balance:

From 1 July 2017, the amount of non-concessional (after-tax) contributions you can make to your super each year without paying extra tax may decrease. This is called your non-concessional contributions cap. When 30 June comes around if your super balance is $1.4 million or more you may be affected. It’s important to work with your authorised accountant or financial advisors to plan the most tax effective way for you to make contributions.

Visit yo ur accountant:

If you’re a business owner or an employee with a high income, we urge you to see your accountant as soon as possible. If you’ve had a profitable year, there may be tax planning measures that can be put in place to legitimately help reduce your tax liability. If you wait until after 30 June, it could be too late!

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