BUSINESSES

As you are preparing your information for your Tax Return, April is an ideal time to reflect on the previous months and assess your processes and procedures in all areas of the business as well as your budgets and cash flow forecasts for the year ahead.

We recommend that you begin the budget process by considering your key targets for the financial year. These include:

• What are your goals for the next 12 months?

• What are your sales targets?

• What affect do you believe the economy will have on your business?

• Break-even calculations – what are they going to be at a various levels of operations?

• Currency fluctuations – if you’re an exporter or importer, what affect will a move in the Australian dollar have in your business?

The best approach in creating a budget is to look at the ‘facts’ of the prior year and then create realistic budgeted targets in four key areas: Stock, Work In Progress Days, Debtors and Creditors. If any of these have blown out last financial year the first thing you need to do is figure out why and begin to implement strategies to remedy these problems.

Once you have created a budget make sure you set a date in about 3 months to go over it again. By reviewing the budget against actual figures any immediate problems will be highlighted straight away instead of finding landmines when you review your financials in another years time.

A way in which Highview can assist this process is to complete interim reports for your business. We can work with you to analyse how your tracking and predict future expenses to enable you to plan for them financially. Interims help to remove any major landmines along the way when it comes to your business taxes.

INDIVIDUALS

Start collating all those receipts you have collected and start thinking about the tax implications of your investments. Can the money that is sitting in bank savings accounts or term deposits be used more tax effectively to get you ahead in real terms? What inflation doesn’t take out, tax will. The two best Government sanctioned ways of avoiding tax are superannuation contributions and franked dividends from shares as both of these give you a way to reduce your tax. We can discuss this with you at your appointment, which leads us to…

Appointments

Make your appointment early. Our accountant’s schedules book out months in advance, so we suggest you book your time in and work towards having all your documentation prepared by that date.

Bank Account Details

The ATO no longer issue refund cheques, so please remember to bring along your bank account details to your appointment. If you are entitled to a tax refund the ATO will bank this into your nominated account.

Private Health Insurance

If you have private health insurance you may be entitled to a tax deduction. Ensure you bring to your appointment your most recent Private Health Insurance Statement.

We look forward to seeing all you lovely people in the coming months!