Trinity Accountants Blog

Trinity Accountants was established in 2011 and has quickly grown into a market leader in Cairns employing 10 Full time staff.  We excel in providing traditional Accounting and Taxation services, but our greatest passion is in our business advisory work.   We love our clients and their businesses and pride ourselves on being part of their successful evolution.  We get that the real key to this is having awesome staff!

Our firm is seeking a full time Graduate Accountant to join the team who truly understands that near enough isn’t good enough for our clients, you must want to go the extra mile to be successful here.    Trinity Accountants provides weekly professional training, as well as ensuring you develop skills in client service, teamwork, time management and networking.

Initial responsibilities include

• Preparation of Financial Statements/Bookkeeping for all entities
• Completion of Activity Statements
• Liaising with Clients and Statutory Authorities

Candidates required skills & attributes

• Completion of Australian Accounting Degree
• Knowledge of: Xero, MYOB
• Excellent communication and professional manner
• Energetic, attention to detail and team oriented

If you are confident that you have the drive, ability and passion to match ours, please email your resume and covering letter to admin@trinityaccountants.com.au.

Please note that due to the expected high volume of applications, only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

From today, 3 July, Trinity Accountants will now be in our new home at 112-118 Mulgrave Road (opposite the Cairns Show Ground main entrance). We can’t wait to welcome you to the new office and give you a tour.

Our phone number and postal address will remain the same… BUT be aware Telstra are having intermittent problems making it all work smoothly, so if you can’t get straight through please try again!

You may have also noticed another (not so small) change and that is our new logo. Over the past few years Trinity Accountants has grown its incredible team and evolved its client services. With the new office move we felt it was a fitting time to launch our new logo and brand to align with these significant changes. We hope you like it as much as we do.

We look forward to seeing you in the new office!

With the end of the 2016/2017 tax year just around the corner we have prepared a Year End Strategy Checklist for claiming the most tax deductions whether you are a Business owner or a standalone Individual Tax Return.

The points outlined in each checklist will help you pay the least amount of tax legally possible.

Find the 2016/2017 Year-end Checklist for Individuals here.  http://bit.ly/2017_Individual_Tax_Return_Checklist  

Find the 2016/2017 Year-end Checklist for Business here.  http://bit.ly/2017_Year_End_Checklist_for_Business

If we can help you in any way please call our friendly team on 4041 6188.

Trinity Accountants specialise in small business and are a Xero certified silver partner.

We have compiled a brief overview of things to do in the coming week to ensure that your tax affairs are structured correctly.

Write off bad debts before June 30 in order to be able to claim a tax deduction

Unfortunately, there will be times that a client does not pay you for work that has been completed. A small consolation can be found in the fact that bad debts are tax deductible, if the proper steps are taken.

These steps include being formally written off in your financial records before June 30 and it may also be necessary for you to provide the ATO with proof that you have taken reasonable steps to recover the amount.

Buy and install that equipment you need ahead of June 30 to claim accelerated depreciation

Businesses that are considering buying new equipment in the coming months should consider bringing forward the asset purchase for the deprecation to be included in this year’s tax deductions to offset their 2017 tax bill.

Businesses that invest in new tools or machinery will receive an immediate tax deduction for any individual assets under $20,000. The $20,000 limit can be applied to as many items as they wish. This limit applies until 30 June 2018.

Assets that exceed the $20,000 limit will be added to the entity’s small business pool and depreciated at 15 per cent in the first income year and 30 per cent each income year thereafter.

Pay FY17 Q4 Superannuation Contributions before 25th June for employees and yourself

Self-employed Australians can claim a tax deduction for contributions made to an eligible superannuation fund. However in FY17 taxpayers who are both employees and self-employed may only claim super contributions as a tax deduction where they have derived less than 10% of their assessable income from employment. These contributions are considered to be part of your concessional contributions cap.

For the FY17 year the general concessional contributions cap is $30,000 (for those aged 49 years or younger on 30 June 2017), while the special concessional contribution cap for older Australians is $35,000 (for those aged 50 years or older as at 30 June 2017). For the FY18 tax year, the concessional contributions cap is $25,000 for all age groups.

To help ensure that yours and your employee contributions are tax deductible in FY17 (not FY18) we recommend that the latest you transfer the money to the various super funds is the 25th June 2017.

Do you need to do a stocktake?

Small businesses can opt out of doing an end of year stocktake (which can be expensive) if the value of their trading stock has not gone up or down by more than $5000 in the past financial year. However, we advise that the end of year stock take is a great management tool for checking the accuracy of reporting systems and identifying issues such as fraud.

As we begin the last quarter of the 2017 financial year, 30 June will be here before we know it.  Now is the right time to review your business performance with us for two main reasons.

1. Tax Planning:  The government has brought in a whole range of measures to help small business and the rules to access them need to be fully understood to obtain the maximum tax benefits.  We can implement actions ahead of year end deadlines to ensure that your business and its operations are structured to achieve maximum profits with the lowest tax bill possible.
2. Business Improvements:  This is the most overlooked area where a great accountant can help your business and is even more important than tax planning! At Trinity Accountants we look after hundreds of small businesses ourselves and have access to Australia wide databases with key metrics of operational performance for hundreds of thousands of businesses.  From experience we know what best practice business owners are doing.  By properly reviewing your figures in April/May we can suggest proactive changes to your overall strategy, pricing, marketing and cost control etc.  The sooner these changes are made the sooner you will improve your business profitability and lifestyle.  As part of this function we also can prepare business plans and full year budgets to assist with effectively keeping your business – and its finances – on track.

What to do next?  Please call Sue to book in your Business Tax Planning and Improvements meeting in preparation for the completion of the 2017 Tax year.

With the announcement that Uber is coming to Cairns there are a few things to know if you are thinking of becoming a Uber driver.

The ATO and Federal court have decided that ‘ride-sourcing’ (such as that provided using Uber) is ‘taxi travel’ within the meaning of the GST law.

This means that Uber drivers are effectively under the same ATO rules as Taxi drivers and need to do the following things:

• Get an Australian business number (ABN);
• register for GST, regardless of how much they earn, and pay GST on the full fare received from passengers for each trip they provide;
• keep detailed records and lodge activity statements (BAS); and
• include income from ride-sourcing in their income tax returns.

Drivers are also entitled to claim income tax deductions and GST credits (for GST paid) on expenses apportioned to the ride-sourcing services they have supplied.

The ATO has warned that they can match people who provide ride-sourcing through data-matching, and will continue to write to them to explain their tax obligations.

Call our office today to discuss the above requirements before you make the decision to start Uber driving.

We are pleased to welcome our newest staff member, Lauren Pinalli to our team.  Lauren is a born and bred Cairns girl and recently graduated with a Bachelor of Business.  She greatly impressed us completing her Xero software training over the Christmas New Year holidays before starting her new job!  After two weeks of working with us we know that Lauren is a going to be a great asset to our firm and clients will love her.   We now have nine qualified Xero accountants in the firm and we truly understand the benefits of Xero cloud based bookkeeping for your business.  Call us today for a free Xero consultation.

The Government and ATO have finally increased the 32.5% tax threshold from $80,000 to $87,000 for the FY17 Tax Year.

The new tax tables for employees who earn over $80,000 are effective from 1 October 2016. You don’t need to make any other adjustments or refunds for the period 1 July 2016 to 30 September 2016 as the ATO will refund any over-payment of tax when your employees (and payees) lodge their 2016-17 income tax return.

You need to download the updated tax tables from ato.gov.au/taxtables or download from your payroll software provider (MYOB or XERO) for the relevant update.

Contact us now to make sure your tax planning is up to date.

We often get asked by clients how they can say thank you to their own clients.

Most clients know that lunches and dinners are not tax deductible but the ATO has confirmed that a taxpayer carrying on business is generally entitled to a deduction for expenses incurred on a gift made to a former or current client, if the gift is characterised as being made for the purpose of producing future assessable income.

However, the expense may not always be deductible (e.g., if the gift constitutes the provision of entertainment that is not deductible).  So for common examples, movie /sporting event tickets or dinner vouchers etc. are generally not tax deductible, but a pen, bottle of wine, perfume or flowers etc. are generally tax deductible. 

The ATO’s recent determination also highlights that a deduction will be denied where expenditure on gifts is more accurately described as being ‘private’ in nature (for example, where a gift is provided to a relative outside a business’ usual practice of providing client gifts).

Please call our office to clarify any questions you may have.

Good accountants will use the latest available data to benchmark your business performance against other similar small business clients. This benchmark data comes from various sources and one of the most comprehensive is actually provided by the ATO covering over 1.3 small businesses using lodged tax returns and business activity statements.

By seeing how other business with similar turnover are performing in key metrics (COGS Margins, Rent to Sales, Wages to Sales, Total operating expenses to Sales etc.) we can identify areas that need improvement.  Using these metrics we have successfully helped clients change their pricing and wage structure to improve their business profitability in a sustainable long term manner.

Also if a small business is inside the benchmark range for their industry and the ATO hasn’t received any extra information that may cause concern, then you can be confident that you probably won’t hear from the ATO.

At Trinity Accountants we are passionate about helping business owners improve their business and find that benchmarking is a key tool.

Call us today to arrange a free consultation.