Do you have a gut feeling that you might be overpaying your taxes?
Perhaps you feel like your bank account balance doesn’t reflect the bill, or you feel like you aren’t getting ahead at all, or possibly that you are falling further behind. You might look at others and they don’t seem to be paying the same amount as you. In the most extreme case, you might even feel like the ATO is making more money than you are.
Your gut might actually be right. We have many clients who, on review, have overstated their income or underclaimed a deduction, often due to book keeping errors, and sometimes for other reasons such as not taking advantage of government concessions and incentives. In many cases the numbers can work out into the thousands, the tens of thousands, and sometimes more.
Many small and medium business owners face the same challenges—rising tax bills, confusing regulations, and missed opportunities to save.
So, if your gut is telling you that there might be something wrong here, it might be worth checking out.
We think it is important to:
- Stay compliant to avoid ATO audits.
- Understand all your options and particularly any government tax concessions and incentives that may be available.
- Uncover overlooked deductions.
- Plan ahead for tax time.
Avoid These Costly Tax Mistakes
When it comes to taxes, even small oversights can have a big impact. From our client cases, these are the most common issues business owners face:
No thought or analysis: It is easy to spend less time and cost and be conservative, and fail to do even the most perfunctory investigation or analysis of what is available. However, sometimes taking the effort to ask questions and work things out properly could save tens of thousands of dollars, or more.
Not taking bookkeeping seriously: People think bookkeeping is easy. IT IS NOT. Bookkeeping is the bedrock of your tax calculations and it can have significant consequences. One time a director was chased for $900,000, as that was recorded as a director loan balance. It was not a real balance. Almost the entire balance was an adjustment entry to make the balance sheet balance.
Doing the bare minimum, not planning ahead, and cash flow mismanagement: Many businesses only do just enough to comply with the ATO but end up missing significant tax-saving opportunities. It is remarkable that a business will get 90% of the way there, where the accounting work is just a cost, without going the extra 10% of the way to make the data usable to plan ahead and making great decisions that will help grow the business.
What Do Business Owners Commonly Ask For?
With 10 Years of client feedback, we’ve identified the top concerns that matter most to business owners like you
1. Being able to trust that everything is being looked at thoroughly
- Many business owners are overpaying on taxes simply because they don’t know what they don’t know. This could include deductions that are available or other concessions and incentives. It creates a dilemma because a business owner will not pass on the information if they don’t know its relevant.
- We take the time to understand your business and ask a lot of questions, so that we can be confident nothing is missing.
2. Proactive Guidance
- Tax isn’t something to think about once a year. Proactive planning ensures you’re always prepared and taking advantage of all available incentives.
- Whether you’re starting a new business or optimising an established one, we keep up to date with your business to help ensure that we are able to provide guidance at the right time.
3. Peace of Mind with Compliance
- We work on a lot audit, disputes and tax cases. No one wants to deal with the stress of an ATO audit but having done so many, we have a very good understanding of what is acceptable and what is not, and what the ATO is looking for. Our services are delivered to ensure that you are audit ready, so you can focus on growing your business.
Why Choose Us?
Good question. If you don’t already know us, then you have at best seen a video on the Internet.
Perhaps we could describe how we do things, and you can decide whether you think it’s worth at least inquiring.
Originally, our principal worked at the Big 4 and top tier, where, quite frankly, the quality of service is considerably better than what the average Australian receives.
The idea was to provide that same level of service to small and medium businesses. Initially, our practice focused on audits and tax disputes, and more complex tax advice.
The expectations of the ATO on small business are considerably higher than what they expect from larger businesses when worked out on a per capita basis. That is, if you look at what output the ATO wants from a business (including quality levels) and divide it by the number of people working there, the expectation per person for a small business is considerably higher than it is for a large business.
This is not simply because small business has less staff. It is because the ATO expects a small business to complete their books and taxes with the same level of rigour that BHP does, but with far less resources. The reason the ATO expects this is because the law is the same for everyone, and so they apply the same standard to everyone, regardless of size. However, due to larger businesses generally having significantly better internal controls, the ATO checks less things when it’s a large business vs a small business.
Lower effort can go both ways. Just as many people will get in trouble for having poor records and be hit with large tax bills, many others will overpay their taxes significantly for the same reason. Sometimes, it is from a lack of understanding of some transactions (especially with Cryptocurrency). Other times, it is because the book keeping is not completed to the requisite level of quality.
Sometimes, we see regular people and smaller businesses copying what they perceive to be complicated tax structures. This is almost always a disaster. Much like you may not think it wise to rent out an entire CBD office building for your small business, it is not wise to have a complicated structure that is not needed or supported by significant cash flows in your business.
It is these insights that form the backbone of our service offering. We think that smaller and medium businesses should not miss out and we think it is important to be shrewd.
If this is what you are looking for, then we would be happy to help.
Take Control of Your Tax Situation
There are always spot fires to put out, but at some point, it is important to try to set yourself up properly for the future and stop carrying around a leaky bucket. Are you willing to let another tax year pass without making the most of your opportunities?