The latest news about Dtax Accountants
Updated 03/11/2011
 

Change of legal structure - Dtax^TM

As the Dtax^TM business evolves, it's become prudent for it to change legal structure to platform our business model, just like we advise our clients to for their own businesses.  Although this change will have no impact or change on our current staff, principal or service delivery, we are under obligation to advise you as a client because the legal tax and ASIC agent (for companies) will change from Dean Milner to DRM Group Holdings Pty Ltd in its capacity as trustee for DRM Trust Fund.  Rest assured that Dean Milner is still the sole acting and nominated tax agent principal of this structure.  This change will become effective on 1st December 2011.

If you have any concerns, questions, or objections ot the new corporate tax and ASIC agent carrying on your tax and business affairs, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss.

Christmas trading hours

The Dtax^TM Accountants Business Studio will be closing 22/12/2011 for the Christmas and New year period, and re-opening on Monday 09/01/2012.  We hope all our client family have a safe and happy festive season.

The first Dtax^TM Business Sentiment will soon be published

Our business gives us an inside and variable privy point of what's happening in the financial world of our client group.  So we'll be publishing to our clients our first Business Sentiment article, which will include some very useful generic business advice for riding out what's appearing to be a very long winded economic recovery.
 

Online bill paying (merchant facilities) coming soon

Again moving to streamlining our business, we'll soon be able to offer credit card payments for our fees online, along with our other normal payment methods.  All on our website, easy to access, 24/7.
 

What else are we working on as a business ourselves?

Apart from online bill paying above, we're considering more efficiencies for our business including streamlined invoicing with standard wording.  We're also working on offering our clients a 'save and send' augmented service where for a small additional fee we provide scanned copies of your documents used for your tax preparation to you electronically, and then destroy the original documents so all you need to keep is the electronic copy.  Its all in conjunction with our ongoing 'War on Paper' promotion!  We'll be promoting this to clients if and when it becomes viable.

updates 13/05/2011 and earlier

Federal Budget 2010 - 2011 - changes that will affect our clients
 

10^th May 2011 the next Federal budget was released and there are some outcomes that will affect most of our clients which are summarised below;

• Deductions against government assistance payment disallowed - a previous recent case allowed deductions against a government allowance due to the study materials required, and the requirements of that benefit to maintain a level of study hours.  The ATO consequently amended prior year returns with a nominal tax deduction for clients with the same circumstances, however the government has now legislatively outlawed this effectively from 1st July 2011.

• Entrepreneur's tax offset abolished - an offset widely used by our client group for small businesses equalling an offset of 25% of income tax liability will be abolished effective 1st July 2012.

• Low income tax offset for minors (under 18) application to unearned income disallowed - The effective tax free threshold for minors for the 2010-11 year is $3333, which is commonly used for family trusts to distribute up to.  However effective 1st July 2011, the government has taken away the use of the low income tax offset for unearned income (eg not from performance of work), effectively making the tax free threshold $416.

• Accelerated initial deduction for motor vehicles for SBEs - from 1st July 2012, SBEs will be able to claim an up front deduction of $5000 on business vehicles purchased, and then the remainder of the purchase price can be pooled for depreciation per normal.

• Car fringe benefits reform - for new contracts (new employees or new cars for employees) after budget night, a 20% standard statutory rate (on value of the car) will be phased in over 4 years.  Accordingly it will no longer matter how many kilometres are travelled once fully phased in, 20% of the car value will be taken to calculate the benefit and any fringe benefits tax liability.  Ordinarily our policy is to make a private use apportionment equal to the value of the fringe benefit (called an employee contribution) to avoid fringe benefits tax that is levied at the highest marginal tax rate.  This measure will affect our advice on purchasing vehicles inside business entities in the future.

• Countering phoenix activities by company directors - the ATO from 1st July 2011 will have the ability under the director penalty regime to personally pursue directors for employee superannuation guarantee, remove any grace period for pursuing unreported company liabilities, and may prevent company directors from claiming withholding credits from a company that has not paid its withholding obligations.

   

Welcome Kathryn

Dtax Accountants welcomes Kathryn, assistant to Dean in the new Business Studio.  Kathryn will be assisting with administrative needs, while we continue to get into providing the best services we can.

Now in the new Dtax Accountants Business Studio!

 Dtax is now operating from our new Business Studio, centrally located in Chirn Park.  You can check out exactly where we are on our contact details page, along with our new contact details.