Tips for individuals
• If you’re a low- or middle-income earner, consider deferring income and accelerating deductions as the personal tax rates are going to drop for the 2012-13 tax year.
• Claim all work-related deductions, but make sure you have all the necessary receipts or credit card statements.
• If you study, and the study is directly related to maintaining or improving your current occupational skills, claim your self-education expenses.
• Deduct home office expenses where part of your home has been set aside for the purpose of doing work from home.
• Maximise your motor vehicle deductions where you have used your motor vehicle for eligible work-related travel.
• Deduct any eligible depreciation including an immediate write off for depreciating assets costing less than $300 which relate to your employment or rental property.
• Identify all your eligible rental property deductions using our deduction checklist.
• Claim relevant non-work related deductions, such as fees paid to a registered tax agent to prepare your tax return or donations.
• Optimise your tax offsets, such as the dependent spouse offset, low-income offset, medical expenses offset and private health insurance offset.
• Consider tax effective superannuation contributions, such as those 50 or over taking advantage of the higher concessional contributions cap of $50,000 before it drops to $25,000 from 2012-13.
• Consider the superannuation co-contribution before the maximum co-contribution drops from $1,000 to $500 for 2012-13
Tips for businesses
• Review salary sacrifice arrangements where employees have foregone gross salary to obtain a packaged car give recent changes to fringe benefits tax
• Make and document trust resolutions for the 2011/12 year by 30 June 2012 to ensure that a trustee is not taxed on the trust’s taxable income at 46.5% or default beneficiaries are inadvertently subject to tax.
• Stream trust capital gains and franked dividends where the trust deed allows the trustee to make a beneficiary “specifically entitled”.
• Comply with Division 7A as the Australian Taxation Office is cracking down on businesses that use the funds or assets of a private company for personal purposes.
• Ensure that any unpaid present entitlement owed by trustee to a private company beneficiary is not treated as a deemed dividend to the trust
• Write off bad debts before they are forgiven to ensure you can claim your bad debt deductions.
• If you’re an eligible small business entity, maximise deductions for depreciating assets.
• If you’re an eligible small business entitle, consider deferring work car purchases until 1 July 2012.
• If you’re an eligible small business entity, claim the entrepreneur’s tax offset. This tax year is the final year this can be claimed by eligible taxpayers
To view CPA Australia’s tips in more detail click here.
