News

Business cash flow boost

Eligle employers:

You will be eligible to receive the cash flow boost if you are a small or medium business entity, including not-for-profit organisations, sole traders, partnership, company or trust that:

• held an ABN on 12 March 2020 and continues to be active
  has an aggregated annual turnover under $50 million (generally based on prior year turnover)
  made eligible payments you are required to withhold from (even if the amount you need to withhold is zero).

Eligible payments include:

• salary and wages
  director fees
  eligible retirement or termination payments
  compensation payments
  voluntary withholding from payments to contractors.

In addition, you must also have either:

• derived business income in the 2018–19 income year and lodged your 2019 tax return on or before 12 March 2020
  made GST taxable, GST-free or input-taxed sales in a previous tax period (since 1 July 2018) and lodged the relevant activity statement on or before 12 March 2020.

Full details here

These are continually being up dated.  Here are the links to some of them:

The Fair Work Ombudsman has issued details regarding Coronavirus and Workplace laws.  Details here

Clerks Award Flexibility arrangements Details here

State Governments.  Some States have changed the Long Service Leave rules and Payroll Tax requirements.  Check your local State or Territory Government website for details.

Employment Separation Certificates. This from Centrelink.  Details here

• “You don’t need to give us an Employment Separation Certificate. We removed it due to coronavirus (COVID-19). We’ll let you know when you need to start using it again.”

The ATO have a number of tools to help small business including, webinars, workshops, benchmarks, record keeping, tax debt management and more

You can check out the full list here

Some useful information from the tax office.  Don’t forget that working directors can be classified as “employees”.

“These days almost everyone is connected to the internet so it’s common for you, as an employer, to reimburse an employee, or for you to pay a third party for the employee’s, home phone or internet costs. This may result in an expense payment fringe benefit.

Broadly, the ‘taxable value’ of an expense payment fringe benefit is:

• the amount you pay the third party or reimburse your employee
• reduced by any amount that the employee would be able to claim as an income tax deduction, such as the business use percentage of the phone and internet.

If the amount you pay the third party or reimburse your employee for home phone or internet per FBT year is:

• up to $50 – your employee just needs to provide you with a declaration to substantiate their business use claim
• over $50 – you and your employee both need to keep records of the actual expenses and substantiate the claim.” More details here