Welcome to Consolid8's Blog
| Property Investor Opportunities by Shellon Dunlop - 13 February, 2012 The government is currently offering two different financial incentives which could result in property investors receiving over $100,000. The incentives are the national rental affordability scheme (NRAS) and the Queensland Building Boost Grant. The NRAS offers tax and cash incentives to providers of new dwellings on the condition that they are rented to low and moderate income households at 20% below market rates. Approved investors receive a combination of refundable tax offsets and cash payments from the government totalling $9,524 per annum for a period of 10 years. The incentive is indexed in line with the rental component of CPI each year. The Queensland Building Boost Grant is a grant of $10,000 for a person or corporation buying or building a new home in Queensland for a value less than $600,000. The grant is open to home owners and investors but a contract must be entered into before 31 January 2012. Most investors will benefit even further through utilising negative gearing to offset other assessable income to create a tax benefit. If you'd like to know more about either of these incentives and whether or not you can gain access to them please call our office, we'd be happy to help. |
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| Do you have Trust Issues? by Shellon Dunlop - 06 February, 2012 The Government produced some legislation last year which has placed further reporting and compliance obligations on trusts. The trustee of a trust must now quote the tax file number of any new beneficiary to the trust to the ATO within 1 month of the end of the quarter that the new beneficiary was admitted. If the TFN is not quoted, then the trustee must withhold tax at a rate of 46.5% when a distribution is made. Since this is a new reporting requirement the ATO have given us a once off opportunity to quote the TFN for all beneficiaries of your trust upon lodgement of the 2011 tax return. In order to get this right the first time (and maximise your distribution opportunities), we may be asking trustee's to provide additional information this year including the trust deed, details of children and grandchildren and company constitutions. If you have any questions about the beneficiaries of your trust please call our office, we'd be happy to help. |
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| Payment Plan Clamp Down by Shellon Dunlop, - 04 January, 2012 The ATO have clamped down considerably on payment plan defaults and re-negotiations in recent months. They are no longer automatically offering interest free terms and quite often require a 50% up-front payment before they will even consider a payment plan. While using the ATO's 'interest free finance' was a great strategy 12 months ago, we are now urging clients to plan for BAS and income tax payments so that you can avoid paying expensive interest and penalties to the ATO. If you'd like to know how to plan better for tax payments please call our office to find out more about our monthly or quarterly reporting options. |
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| Cloud Accounting by Roxanne De Jager - 28 Sept, 2011 - C8 Accounting Recently featured in the article "Cloud Accounting": In the Black Magazine, Tanya Titman was asked what she thought about the shift in using traditional PC based accounting software to Cloud Accounting software. We already know that we no longer have to waste time manually entering bank data into accounting software because there are bank feeds that automate up to 90% of the transactions but have you thought about moving to a cloud based accounting software package? Instead of buying and installing software on your PC, you login to your online hosted file, giving you flexibility in not only how and where you work but how your accountant accesses your information. Live data is the most important advantage – backing up and sending your file to your accountant effectively puts a hold on running your business, so why not let all parties see the same up to date information from wherever they may be - home, interstate, overseas. There are a number of online accounting packages with most new releases just around the corner – Saasu, Xero, MYOB LiveAccounts and Quickbooks Online are all easy to use online accounting suites that offer more up-to-date functionality than your regular system. Dashboards giving you a snap shot of how your business is doing, add-in features for online businesses that work especially well for eBay traders, Apps for Android and iPhones and incorporated bank feeds within the software. So what's the cost? Initial outlay starts from $25 a month, great for small start up businesses and for cutting bookkeeping fees. But there are other costs to consider when handing your valuable data over to someone else to host like the backup system you should have in place. Don't rely on just one backup, your cloud host has the data backed up but you should too, and not just locally either – take an external hard drive home or off site on a weekly basis. The better your backup system the better off you will be in the event that something goes wrong. Your data is the hardest thing to replace in your business and it is the most valuable so back it up. If you have been thinking about moving to online accounting software speak to your accountant first – after all we aren't trying to sell it to you but we have seen and used all the products and know what's going to work for your situation and, more importantly, what's not going to work. Read the full "Cloud Accounting" In the Black article here: http://itb.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx Consolid8 is a MYOB Live Accounts accredited consultant and a gold partner with Saasu and Xero. Next time: Is Your Accountant an Untapped Resource? Why employ a business coach if you already have one? |
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