End of Financial Year
HAPPY NEW FINANCIAL YEAR! Yes it’s that time again ….. those four little letters that strike fear into almost every business owner – EOFY. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. If you’ve been a client with us for a while we’re probably your best friend right now (smile) and it’s likely you have the right procedures to breeze through this period of the year (just keep breathing – we’ve got your back). June does seem to be the month when everyone starts to panic, but when you look at things logically, you can put strategies in place to help you through July, which is the month with all the deadlines! It’s likely you’re on top of most of these dates and changes anyway, but please go ahead and use this blog as your check-list, knowing that all i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.
Firstly, and most importantly, you need to set up your accounting system and procedures to take into account the new rules and changes within STP, SUPER and minimum wage. Let’s take a closer look at those:
1st JULY – STP 2
For those of you who have staff, STP is changing – but only slightly. It means you no longer need to send the tax file number declaration (separately) to the ATO as this information should now be collected in your accounting software. The way you report STP and dates won’t change. There’s a few other minor changes so if you want to read more see this ATO link.
1st JULY - SUPER CHANGES
i) Super will change in the new financial year to 10.5%. Make sure that your first pay run of the year has been set correctly to the new amount.
ii) The threshold of only paying super once an employee has earned over $450/month has been removed. That means you must pay Super to anyone who works for you, no matter how much or how little they earn.
iii) Super must now also be paid to under 18’s if they work for more than 30 hours per week.
1st JULY – CHANGES TO MINIMUM WAGE
Minimum wage rates are changing. The hourly rate is slightly different across various awards, so do double-check and confirm with FairWork if you are paying minimum wage to your employees. You can check out your awards here
So once you have all those important changes in place, you now have a couple of weeks to breathe and get everything under control before obligations with the Tax Office start to kick in. If you get things completed and lodged earlier it will certainly relieve the stress levels, but here are the deadlines for you to tick off:
14th JULY
STP finalisation of payroll to ATO
21st JULY
Payroll Tax due for lodgement and payment
28th JULY
Superannuation to be received by Superannuation funds for June quarter of FY22
Quarterly lodgement and payment of Activity PAYG installments
Quarterly lodgement and payment of GST installments
28th AUGUST
Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR)
(ok ok…..yesit’s August – but I sneaked it in as part of your check list)
Well done if you’ve got this far without hyper-ventilating! It does seem a lot to get through I know, but don’t forget, as your trusted book-keeper and part of your team, we are here to help you get through the overwhelm. We want to help you through this time with as little stress as possible, so if you are struggling with anything regarding those four little letters, EOFY, please don’t hesitate to call us.
Having said that, there is one more word that might just give you jitters, but I’ll put it in really small letters to take away the shock - STOCKTAKE!!!!! I hope that didn’t get your heart pumping too fast! As an SME, you’re likely onto it. Stocktakes are best completed on 30th June or earlier, and we appreciate you might be reading this a little later than that, but hopefully, you will have everything under control. If you want to read more about stocktake obligations, we found this article quite informative.
We hope you’ve found this blog valuable. You may have noticed that it’s the first blog we’ve put out in a while, so thank you for reading this far! But let’s face it, we did have a lot to cover. We really do hope that the EOFYisn’t too much stress for you all, and remember to call us with any queries. No query is too small – it’s far better to fix any issues you have straight away than spend time worrying about it.
Our next blog, will hopefully be less stressful too – we won’t be focusing on the ATO and tax stuff (too much), we’ll be looking at the top 7 ways WestBAS can help you in your business. And if you have any pressing questions you’d like us to cover in our blogs, then please comment and let us know!
Wishing you a happy and stress-free EOFY
- Susan