Below are some important new services and advice from the Australian Tax Office. If you wish to discuss any of these further, please contact our office.
ATO warning on 2013/14 work-related deductions
This tax time the ATO says that, in relation to work-related expenses, it will not be limiting its attention to certain occupations.
Instead, particular attention will be paid to work-related expense claims relating to:
- overnight travel;
- transporting bulky tools and equipment; and
- the work-related proportion of use for computers, phones or other electronic devices.
ATO’s new Business Viability Assessment Tool
The ATO has designed and launched a new online tool to help businesses and tax agents determine whether a business is viable.
Once the tax agent or taxpayer has answered a series of questions, they will be provided with a report that will contain an overall viability assessment of their business based on the information they have provided, consisting of:
- a summary of key financials and business performance; and
- charts that provide a visual summary of the trends of key financial results generated by the business.
Project DO IT update (i.e., ‘disclose offshore income today’)
Project ‘DO IT’ is an amnesty for taxpayers with offshore assets or income to voluntarily come clean by 19 December 2014.
Under Project DO IT, taxpayers:
- are encouraged to disclose omitted income or over-claimed deductions relating to their offshore activities;
- will not be investigated or referred for criminal investigation by the ATO; and
- will generally only be assessed for the last four years.
The ATO says that its voluntary disclosure initiative, Project DO IT (in relation to taxpayers coming forward and disclosing overseas income and assets), is receiving a strong response with a number of people having already come forward to make a disclosure.
