Are You Using The Right Business Industry Code?

Are You Using The Right Business Industry Code?

Business industry code tool

A business industry code (BIC) is a five-digit code you include on relevant tax returns and schedules that describes your main business activity.

BICs are derived from the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) codes and have been simplified for tax return reporting purposes.

Find the correct BIC for your business

Use the BIC tool to help you find the correct BIC for your business.

  1. If you know your ANZSIC code or BIC
    • enter the code in the search field
    • click through the relevant link and check that it covers your activities.
  2. If you don’t know your code you can search by entering your main business activity or a key word that describes what you do into the search field (see example).
  3. Click through the relevant link and check that it covers your activities.

About the codes

The codes are very broad. One code might cover many different work types, activities and industries. If the codes are not an exact match to your role or title, choose the code that is closest.

If you have more than one work type or business:

  • use the activity that gives you the highest gross income or smallest loss
  • report this at the relevant labels on your tax return.

Example: search for codes

Search the broadest term for your business and select the closest match. If you’re a:

  • copywriter – search ‘writing’
  • financial manager – search ‘finance’ or ‘management’ separately
  • ride-sourcing driver for Uber, Shebah, GoCatch or others – search ‘taxi’
  • teacher – search ‘teaching’, ‘school’ or ‘tutoring’.

End of example

How to update your code

As your work or business changes or expands you may need to update your BIC. Do this by:

It’s important to get it right

Using the right code is important as it ensures you are lodging your return in the right category. This helps:

  • avoid delays in the processing of your return
  • reduce the risk of your business being incorrectly targeted for compliance activities
  • ensure you receive services and materials that are relevant for your business type.

After you have the right BIC, you can also use the small business benchmarks to compare your business’ performance against similar businesses in your industry.

FBT Lodgement – Do Your Need to Pay FBT?

FBT Lodgement – Do Your Need to Pay FBT?

Do you need to pay FBT?

You may be required to pay fringe benefits tax (FBT) if you provide certain fringe benefits to an employee (or their associate) in respect of employment. An employee can be a current, future or past employee, or a director of a company or trust.

You will need to pay FBT even if the benefit is provided to an associate of your employee or by a third party under an arrangement with you.

Examples of fringe benefits include:

  • allowing your employee to use a work car for private purposes
  • giving your employee a discounted loan
  • paying an employee’s gym membership
  • providing entertainment by way of free tickets to concerts
  • reimbursing an expense incurred by your employee, such as school fees
  • giving benefits under a salary sacrifice arrangement with an employee.

Some employers, including charities, need to assess the status of their workers when working out their FBT liability. Generally, benefits provided to volunteers and contractors don’t attract FBT.

You must self-assess your own FBT liability each FBT year (1 April to 31 March) and lodge an FBT return before the due date.

Get Your Business Records Ready For The Tax Period

Get Your Business Records Ready For The Tax Period

Income and expenses for tax returns

Your tax return will show whether you have made a tax profit or a loss and will determine how much tax you should pay.

You need to keep comprehensive records explaining all transactions that relate to your tax affairs. This will help you complete and lodge your tax returns each year.

Keeping good records also ensures you are meeting your reporting obligations.

Records you need for your tax return

Your business records must contain enough information to calculate the income, expense and other amounts you must report in your tax return.

You will need to keep records of your transactions; cash, online, EFTPOS, bank statements, credit or debit card, covering:

  • gross earnings or proceeds from your business including
    • sales
    • income earned from the sharing economy
  • other money received such as
    • foreign income
    • personal services income
    • crowdfunding
    • payments outside of ordinary business activities
    • government payments
    • commissions, investment earnings, gratuities and compensation payments
  • expenses you will claim as a deduction such as
    • business travel expenses
    • motor vehicle expenses
    • salary, wages and super
    • repairs, maintenance and replacement expenses
    • home office expenses for a home-based business
    • other operating expenses
    • capital assets and expenses

We may review your tax return and ask for copies of your records to check the information provided. If we are unable to verify these claims, we may adjust your return. We will contact you before this occurs.

See also:

Keeping your tax return records up to date

It is easier for you to lodge your tax return if you update your records regularly. We recommend you use the following practices to help:

  • Reconcile daily sales to ensure all sales are accounted for.
  • Keep specific records showing when you use business purchases for private purposes or make cash payments and drawings. This will ensure your business finances can be easily separated from your personal finances.
  • If you use a bookkeeper or a registered agent, regularly summarise your expenses. This may reduce the time it takes them to prepare your tax return or activity statements.

There are commercial business accounting packages which can automatically update and summarise your income and expenses records for you. Alternatively, you can do it manually by keeping a record of cash book totals for the period.

Use our record keeping evaluation tool to evaluate how well you are keeping business records.

Wear Occupation Specific Clothes?

Wear Occupation Specific Clothes?

Clothing, laundry and dry-cleaning expenses

You can claim a deduction for the cost of buying and cleaning occupation-specific clothing, protective clothing and unique, distinctive uniforms.

To make a deduction you may need to have written evidence that you purchased the clothing and diary records or written evidence of your cleaning costs.

If you received an allowance from your employer for clothing, uniforms, laundry or dry-cleaning, make sure you show the amount of the allowance on your tax return.

Follow the links below for more information about:

Occupation-specific clothing

You can claim for clothing that is specific to your occupation, is not everyday in nature and allows the public to easily recognise your occupation – such as the checked pants a chef wears.

You can’t claim the cost of purchasing or cleaning clothes you bought to wear for work that are not specific to your occupation, such examples as a bartender’s black trousers and white shirt, a business person’s suit or a swimming instructor’s swimwear.

See also:

Protective clothing

You can claim for clothing and footwear that you wear to protect yourself from the risk of illness or injury posed by your income-earning activities or the environment in which you are required to carry them out. To be considered protective, the items must provide a sufficient degree of protection against that risk.

Protective clothing includes:

  • fire-resistant and sun-protection clothing
  • safety-coloured vests
  • non-slip nurse’s shoes
  • rubber boots for concreters
  • steel-capped boots, gloves, overalls, and heavy-duty shirts and trousers
  • overalls, smocks and aprons you wear to avoid damage or soiling to your ordinary clothes during your income-earning activities.

Ordinary clothes (such as jeans, drill shirts, shorts, trousers, socks, closed shoes) are not regarded as protective clothing if they lack protective qualities designed for the risks of your work.

You can’t claim the cost of purchasing or cleaning ordinary clothes you wear for work that may also protect you. For example, you can’t claim for normal, closed shoes, even though you wear them to protect your feet.

Work uniforms

You can claim for a uniform, either compulsory or non-compulsory, that is unique and distinctive to the organisation you work for.

Clothing is unique if it has been designed and made only for the employer. Clothing is distinctive if it has the employer’s logo permanently attached and the clothing is not available to the public.

You can’t claim the cost of purchasing or cleaning a plain uniform.

Compulsory work uniform

This is a set of clothing that identifies you as an employee of an organisation with a strictly enforced policy that makes it compulsory for you to wear the uniform while you’re at work.

You may be able to claim a deduction for shoes, socks and stockings where they are an essential part of a distinctive compulsory uniform and where their characteristics (colour, style and type) are specified in your employer’s uniform policy.

You may be able to claim for a single item of distinctive clothing, such as a jumper, if it’s compulsory for you to wear it at work.

Non-compulsory work uniform

You can’t claim expenses incurred for non-compulsory work uniforms unless your employer has registered the design with AusIndustry.

Shoes, socks and stockings can never form part of a non-compulsory work uniform, and neither can a single item such as a jumper.

See also:

Cleaning of work clothing

You can claim the costs of washing, drying and ironing eligible work clothes, or having them dry-cleaned.

You must have written evidence, such as diary entries and receipts, for your laundry expenses if both:

  • the amount of your claim is greater than $150, and
  • your total claim for work-related expenses exceeds $300 – not including car, meal allowance, award transport payments allowance and travel allowance expenses.

If you don’t need to provide written evidence for your laundry expenses, you may use a reasonable basis to work out your claim. For washing, drying and ironing you do yourself, we consider that a reasonable basis for working out your laundry claim is:

  • $1 per load – this includes washing, drying and ironing – if the load is made up only of work-related clothing, and
  • 50 cents per load if other laundry items are included.

If you choose a different basis to work out your claim, we may ask you to explain that basis.

Dry-cleaning expenses

You can claim the cost of dry-cleaning work-related clothing. If your total claim for work-related expenses exceeds $300 – not including car, meal allowance, award transport payments allowance and travel allowance expenses – you must have written evidence to substantiate your claim.

The Ten Best Ways To Save

The Ten Best Ways To Save

We all want to save money. And whether it’s by denying yourself that $4 mocha latte once a week or putting off an exotic family vacation, everyone has their own way to save.

Use these money-saving tips to generate ideas about the best ways to save money in your day-to-day life.

1. Eliminate Your Debt

If you’re trying to save money through budgeting but still carrying a large debt burden, start with the debt. Not convinced? Add up how much you spend servicing your debt each month, and you’ll quickly see. Once you’re free from paying interest on your debt, that money can easily be put into savings. A personal line of credit is just one option for consolidating debt so you can better pay it off.

2. Set Savings Goals

One of the best ways to save money is by visualizing what you are saving for. If you need motivation, set saving targets along with a timeline to make it easier to save. Want to buy a house in three years with a 20 percent down payment? Now you have a target and know what you will need to save each month to achieve your goal. Use Regions savings calculators to make your goal!

3. Pay Yourself First

Set up an auto debit from your checking account to your savings account each payday. Whether it’s $50 every two weeks or $500, don’t cheat yourself out of a healthy long-term savings plan.

4. Stop Smoking

No, it’s certainly not easy to quit, but if you smoke a pack and a half every day, that amounts to nearly $3,000 a year you can realize in savings if you quit. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of Americans who smoke cigarettes is now below 20 percent for the first time since at least the mid-1960s — join the club!

5. Take a “Staycation”

Though the term may be trendy, the thought behind it is solid: instead of dropping several thousand on airline tickets overseas, look in your own backyard for fun vacations close to home. If you can’t drive the distance, look for cheap flights in your region.

6. Spend to Save

Let’s face it, utility costs seldom go down over time, so take charge now and weatherize your home. Call your utility company and ask for an energy audit or find a certified contractor who can give you a whole-home energy efficiency review. This will range from easy improvements like sealing windows and doors all the way to installing new insulation, siding or ENERGY STAR high-efficiency appliances and products. You could save thousands in utility costs over time.

7. Utility Savings

Lowering the thermostat on your water heater by 10°F can save you between 3-5 percent in energy costs. And installing an on-demand or tankless water heater can deliver up to 30 percent savings compared with a standard storage tank water heater.

8. Pack Your Lunch

An obvious money-saving tip is finding everyday savings. If buying lunch at work costs $7, but bringing lunch from home costs only $2, then over the course of a year, you can create a $1250 emergency fund or make a significant contribution to a college plan or retirement fund.

9. Create an Interest-Bearing Account

For most of us, keeping your savings separate from your checking account helps reduce the tendency to borrow from savings from time to time. If your goals are more long-term, consider products with higher yield rates like a Regions CD or Regions Money Market account for even better savings.

10. Annualize Your Spending

Do you pay $20 a week for snacks at the vending machine at your office? That’s $1,000 you’re removing from your budget for soda and snacks each year. Suddenly, that habit adds up to a substantial sum.

Need help with your personal finances? Call us and book a FREE strategy session. We can help

Saving For Fhe Future

Saving For Fhe Future

FIVE SUPER SIMPLE TIPS TO SAVE FOR THE FUTURE

Don’t plan on working forever?

Do you plan on working forever? One day you’ll want to retire, which means it’s never too early to think about your superannuation. Thankfully, we’ve put together some simple ways to boost your super so you can have more money in the future.

1. Check your payslip to make sure your superannuation is being correctly paid.

Over 2 million Australian workers eligible for super are missing out on some, or all, of their super fund entitlements. This is around an average of $2,025 per person, per year. Your super needs to be paid to you by your employer at least once every quarter, and should amount to 9.5% of your pre-tax income. Get into the habit of checking your pay slips to ensure you are receiving the correct super.

2. Make sure you’ve only got one superannuation account.

It can be easy to accumulate multiple super accounts when moving from workplace to workplace. However, having multiple accounts means multiple fees, and this will eat away at your retirement savings. Every dollar counts, because over time your super builds through the magic of compound interest. Find out more about the simple process for consolidating your super.

3. Put an extra $10 a week into super.

By contributing a tiny bit more to your super, you could boost your savings by tens of thousands of dollars by the time you retire. Most super funds will allow you to make voluntary contributions at any time, or you can ask your employer to contribute more of your pre-tax income to your account.

4. Find your lost or unclaimed superannuation.

You might have lost some of your money to old, forgotten-about super fund accounts. In fact, the Australian Tax Office says that there’s nearly $18 billion in lost or unclaimed super in Australia! If you’re worried that you might have lost track of your super, visit the MyGov website to search for your money.

5. Review your super fund and compare the pair.

Compare your existing super fund with others in the market to ensure you are with the best fund to meet your needs.

Industry SuperFunds are run to profit you and provide you with the best outcome in retirement. Compare the pair to see if you could have been better off with an Industry SuperFund.

You can also use our tool to perform side by side comparisons of funds, looking at areas such as investment performance, insurance coverage and fees.

If you’re still unsure which fund is right for you, it’s best to get independent, unbiased guidance from a professional financial adviser.