\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acctweb.com.au\/images\/cgt-traps.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Businesses should be alert to three potential tax return trip-wires that could run it up against ATO compliance this year, Assistant Commissioner Andrew Watson said.<\/p>\n
Speaking on this week\u2019s Accountants Daily podcast, Mr Watson said the office was focusing on three areas when it came to business claims. The first centred on a trend reinforced by work from home during the two years of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been around for a while as an issue, but probably as we\u2019ve all experienced over the last few years, some of the lines between work and home have blurred as we\u2019ve gone into lockdowns and many business owners \u2013 they might have business premises \u2013 but have done more work out of home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust make sure that apportionment is happening and you\u2019re not just claiming business expenses that include an element of private expense.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said a second area of scrutiny related to businesses omitting some aspects of their income, a problem that had risen over the last couple of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat might be doing some business through a shopfront and also doing some through a sharing economy platform \u2013 whether it be a restaurant through Uber Eats or a tradie working through Airtasker. Just make sure that all those different sources of business income are reported,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the ATO\u2019s random audit program revealed a strong correlation between compliant businesses and good record-keeping, which was a third area of focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a random audit program that helps us to estimate the tax gap. It helps inform us where people get things wrong, but it also shows us what are the common characteristics of people that get stuff right,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we do see that businesses who have got good digital systems, get good advice including how to set up those systems, and then keep good records on those, are a lot more likely to be compliant with their tax.\u201d<\/p>\n
Complete records were fundamental, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to make sure that you\u2019ve got sufficient records to be able to substantiate those claims,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that also at times includes when you\u2019re apportioning those private and business expenses, you record sort of the rationale of why you\u2019re splitting those up.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if anyone is still keeping that shoebox, the ATO app has actually got a neat little functionality to record some of those receipts but there\u2019s also plenty of commercial offerings that as you\u2019re going along, you take a snap on of that receipt and it just stores them away.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s a digital shoebox, but it does make life a lot easier for yourself and your tax agent when it comes time to doing your tax return.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Philip King
\n29 August 2022
\naccountantsdaily.com.au<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wayward habits accentuated by the pandemic will be a compliance focus.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actinvest.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}