Entries by Salisbury Accountants & Business Advisors

Using stock for private use

ATO’s small business benchmarks and stock for private use

If your business takes items of trading stock for your own use, you need to record the value of the stock (excluding GST) so you can include it as part of your assessable income in your income tax returns.

Including this amount may help prevent your […]

Indicators of itinerant workers

Bonafide ‘mobile’ work can open up more deductions

Digital capabilities, a growing “gig economy” and the changing nature of employment means that many Australians are becoming more mobile in their income-earning activities, or in some circumstances practically nomadic chasing work.

With the ATO on the lookout for “red flags” for taxpayers making false work travel […]

Customer analysis

The Importance of Categorising Your Customers

Always Be Ready to Adapt Your Business to Change

You probably heard the phrase the customer is always right, well maybe that’s not quite right.

Perhaps it should be rephrased and what we should be thinking about here is, the RIGHT customer, is always right.

There’s a subtle difference […]

Numbers should tell a story

Money is a tricky topic for a lot of business owners

There’s the matter of how to account for it, how to present it and, of course, how to raise it. 

In this day and age where accounting has been made a lot easier and financial information more transparent, how should business owners approach their […]

Sales Data to Drive Success

The Shifting Landscape of Sales

The science of plate tectonics is how we explain the movement of continents. Yes, continents are moving all the time … but extremely slowly!

For instance, it is said that the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are moving away from each other at about 2.5 centimetres per year!

Fortunately, […]

Work expense deductions

Myths (and the facts) about work expense deductions

There can be varied sources for some of the myths about tax deductions —pub-talk, BBQ-banter, hairdresser-homilies, what-your-taxi-driver-just-heard and many others.

Mainstream media only recently was peppered with reports about the ATO being faced with many outlandish tax deduction claims — dental expenses, gambling losses, Lego sets and […]

Tradies claiming tax deductions

Tradies: Some tax claims pivot on how you operate

Working tradies need to be certain about what can or can’t be claimed on their annual tax return.

A lot of the time, what you can claim depends on whether you’re an employee tradie or a small business (that is, operating as a sole trader, partnership, […]