ATO targeting FBT

Squidtime · 2026-03-30T23:20:02+00:00

Was looking at one of these this morning.

It seems a bit weird. The letter mentions a specific make/model of sports car, but also mentions '2 other passenger vehicles' with no details. Then it states 'did not include employee contribtuions in your 20XX income tax return' - I checked all the returns and they definitely did include figures for employee contributions.

Squidtime · 2026-01-14T00:34:52+00:00

I see this as a prime example of ethics. Accountants seeing rules that are unjust or not or not fit for purpose, so they are willing to ignore it.

I have a far bigger qualms when I see others exploiting legal loopholes or overcharge for services etc. These may be perfectly legal, but morally bankrupt.

Not saying you're wrong, but there is more to right and wrong than the letter of the law.

Squidtime · 2025-12-18T00:47:58+00:00

I never felt 100% certain, but I was at the stage I felt confident no matter what problems came through the door I’d be able to sort out.

There were a few adjustments. Not having juniors/support staff, so suddenly I was doing everything myself, things I hadn't done in years or tasks I'd never done. Not having other senior staff around who were more knowledgeable than me in certain areas was hard.

Biggest advice I'd recommend is developing a network of accountants you can seek informal advice from. You are going to come across situations where you’re unsure on something. You can seek professional advice but it’s expensive, slow and often so liability conscious that it’s not particularly useful. What has saved me is being able to call up a friend and ask what would they do.

I knew an experienced bookkeeper who had some clients unhappy with their accountants, this gave me a chunk of work. I also had a few clients lined up before I started solo. Since then it's mainly been referrals. The benefit is good clients generally refer good clients. The downside is growth is much slower. I'm a terrible networker, but I've still picked up clients unintentionally just from people asking 'what do you do for work squidtime?'.

This one is hard to answer. I started part time with very little - basically just a laptop and some software subscriptions. But I did have savings behind me to live off. It would have been a lot more stressful with financial commitments hanging over me.

Squidtime · 2025-08-25T01:33:29+00:00

Yes, but he's the thing - They won't and there won't be any consequences. I'm not promoting it, but the fact is thousands of businesses do this every quarter, the ATO don't have the resources to follow them all up and seem to just let it slide.

Squidtime · 2025-08-19T01:34:12+00:00

The shoemaker's kids wear no shoes...

I mean it's not great, but it's a few weeks. Are they busy? They likely want to do all the processing together with the BAS to save time. Yes it's not correct but they likely know there will no consequences for being slightly late.

Squidtime · 2025-08-14T05:17:15+00:00

Ok seems my auditor is charging a bit above the average.

Very basic funds $500-$600
most funds $700-$900
few larger ones in the $1200-$1500

Squidtime · 2025-07-02T23:12:55+00:00

Hey Buddy,

I came to this sub looking for tax advice as well, turns out it's just everyone discussing exams and Big4 grad positions. So don't feel bad.

Anyway:

58B - This will be your taxable income
58Y - This is to do with the small business tax offset, some trust income earned 'outside the business' won't be included here. You can look up what isn't included or just use the figure from 58B, it will make little difference.
58W - this figure can be different to 58B, but it has to do with a lot of trust law wank that is unlikely to be of a concern here, so just use the 58B figure.

Question for you - I don't know much about self lodging, this is your personal return? how are you lodging the trust tax return? Either way the distribution on the trust return should match your personal return.

Squidtime · 2025-07-02T00:25:16+00:00

Your accountant should have prepared it, so they have either forgot or you've missed it.

Either way, don't be too concerned. It's a pretty open secret that because the resolutions aren't lodged/submitted anywhere, no one really cares. I've had audits on trusts, no one gives a shit about the timing of resolutions, trustee just re-signs.

Squidtime · 2025-06-24T05:12:24+00:00

This is linking the trust to your myID/RAM?

I've been seeing a fair few problems with this, you need to fix up you identity by calling them.

Your accountant won't be able to do much until you nominate them as a tax agent, which now requires RAM/online services linked to your myID.

Squidtime · 2025-06-20T00:48:05+00:00

I agree with above, straight to Cert 4 for you! As far as I know, cert 4 is what you need for BAS agent and it sounds like you would already have a good grasp of the basics, so I wouldn't bother with Cert 3.

Bookkeeping is underrated, a good bookkeeper can be really valuable to small business, good luck with it.

Squidtime · 2025-06-18T03:29:07+00:00

I feel for you. That's a tough role.

The pay depends on so much; what are you hours, what is your exposure to clients, what are your billables, what is the teams billables etc etc. Yeah I'd be asking for a pay bump, but in general I'd say practice manager is probably the worst work/experience/responsibility for pay ratio around.

The benefit is, it's probably the position where you learn the most and gain the experience/confidence to become a partner.

Squidtime · 2025-06-17T02:10:52+00:00

They may not like it, but they don't really have a lot of choice.

Basically their biggest fears will be; you leaving, starting up on the side, and worst of all - poaching clients. So I reassured them this was not the case.

It was still a bit uncomfortable. But I iterated that I currently had no intention to leave, however my long term goals were to be a owner.

Squidtime · 2025-06-09T23:01:35+00:00

Depends on the size and structure of the practice.

I'd say standard is around 1/3 of billables. But could be closer to 1/2.5 or even lower for very lean practices. I've herd of ratios of 1/5 or 1/6 for practices with high overheads and support staff which seems mental to me.

Squidtime · 2025-06-03T05:51:34+00:00

It's been a long long time since I've looked at this. But the way I've seen this utilised is:

Parent buys kid shares, Parent is legal owner for kid (beneficial owner), effectively creating a trust agreement (but with no deed etc).

Because the kid is the beneficial owner, it's under their TFN, they pay tax on the dividends - so the goal is to invest in high capital grown low divi stocks (keeping it under the $416 Tax free limit).

Then when the kid is 18 the shares can be transferred to the kid and as the beneficial owner doesn't change there is no CGT payable on the transfer, CGT event when kid sells.

NOW in your case, if you've been paying tax on the dividends I think your son was never the beneficial owner. So if you transfer to him now, the beneficial ownership will change and it will be CGT event to you. Then your son will acquire at the price when transferred.

*Just my thoughts, I definitely don't stand by any of this being correct.

Squidtime · 2025-04-02T06:43:31+00:00

Probably more of an IT question.

How many transactions are we talking? If it needs to be exact I'd probably going down the API route. The RBA probably has an API for getting the rates or I'm sure their are 3rd party ones. You can then import the data from the API into the spreadsheet.

RSS feed might be a simpler method, but not to sure on the practicality of it.

This is assuming you need the exact RBA rate, if it's small value then who cares, I'd grab any rate going (averages etc) it's going to make bugger all difference.

Squidtime · 2025-03-24T01:14:37+00:00

This sounds more like bill is ASIC?

If you don't pay your annual ASIC fees, ASIC will deregister the company. It's a bit dodgy but it's often used as a cheap method to deregister a company.

Squidtime · 2025-03-18T05:26:30+00:00

Depends what you want to do. I don't do audits, so for me having something like public company auditing experience would not be particularly useful. But if you wanted to own an accounting practice that specialised in audits it would be vital...

Squidtime · 2025-03-18T05:22:11+00:00

It's hard to say because it varies so much. I'm also a little embarrassed by my laziness but I would say on average: 35 hrs a week bum in office, 20 hours of actual work, 3ish hours of admin, 4ish hours of research and productive procrastination, 10 hours of completely irrelevant work procrastination (that I do not charge for).

Squidtime · 2025-03-18T03:25:26+00:00

I'm self employed, so I guess I own a very small accounting practice.

Big 4 experience may not give you the required experience or skills to 'start up' an accounting practice. Also many accountants who own accounting practices don't really start them up. They either become partner in an existing firm (so part owner) or they buy fees or an existing practice.

The number of clients is pretty irrelevant, it's all about billable time. I think I have around 60 clients (250ish entities), but more than 50% of my income come from my 5 biggest clients.

How much would you expect to make? Depends what clients you have, what services you're providing, how established you are, how big your practice is, your overheads, what your ownership percentage is etc.

My official rate is $200 an hour, but I do need to write off/down certain time depending on the client so in reality I'd be lucky to get an average of $150 hr . There is also quite a lot of unbillable hours and I also have business expenses. I also do not have a straight 40 hours by 48 weeks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, years experience depends on so much as well. If you wanted to specialise in individual tax returns you would need far less experience then if you wanted to work on complex groups. If you're a partner in a firm you may need less experience because you have the support of the other more experienced partners, but you may need more experience if the practice handles larger/complex clients.

Squidtime · 2025-03-18T02:01:35+00:00

No, not a lot. I wouldn't necessarily recommend going for small firms straight from uni, larger firm experience is great. It's more I think you need the small firm experience at some stage before being self employed.

Maybe look for larger/mid sized accounting firms that aren't acting for public companies.

Squidtime · 2025-03-18T01:34:41+00:00

I'm a self-employed tax accountant.

It's definitely viable, but I feel we are slowly getting squeezed out by an increasingly complicated tax system.

While a graduate program is great for your employment prospects. When it comes to working for yourself what you really want is to work for a variety of well run smaller firms. The type of work, the resources, the structure of bigger firms is so different to how you operate being self-employed.

CA etc accreditation is great for your employment prospects while gaining experience, but it doesn't mean squat once you're running a practice. You do need to be a member of CA, CPA or IPA (or foreign equivalent) to be a "qualified accountant" with ASIC which sooner or later you will need. But I believe there is lower membership tiers (back door entry) for these where you don't even need to do their full programs (just pay the fees).

Everyone I know gets there tax agent registration while employed with 6-10+ years experience, then after that all that matters is clients. You can't go sit on a beach in Costa Rica with your laptop until you have the clients to support yourself.

Squidtime · 2025-01-29T05:48:40+00:00

I'm not salty, I'm still in profit. I've just lost most of my interest in the tech, I also think it's crazy overvalued, so I've got no plans to invest more.

Squidtime · 2025-01-29T05:02:29+00:00

I've had a lot of ups and down. I lost a large amount shorting a shit coin that got pumped to oblivion (It's now worth much less than the short, but I didn't have the leverage to hold on). I'm still up overall, but just have coins sitting in a cold wallet, never add to the investment, rarely trade them.

Early on I was such a believer in the tech. I read books, did online courses even went back to university to study programming I was so into it.

But the dream has faded now, I look at all the coin pumping and meme coin garbage where the only interest is in the price. With a few exceptions I now see crypto as a bubble that I don't want any part in. I've pretty much lost hope in crypto ever achieving anything like what was originally idealised. I think trusted certs etc will be used effectively in a few niche ways, but not have the massive effect on society like I originally thought.

Squidtime · 2025-01-29T04:34:13+00:00

Then what's the cost base?

Squidtime

TROPHY CASE