Accounting & Wealth Insights

The accounting landscape for small and medium business enterprises has changed dramatically over the past few years and along with it the software used to manage businesses. The health care industry is no exception.

Australia has introduced a new law applying the Australian Goods and Services Tax (GST) to international sales of digital products and services provided to Australian consumers. Under the new law, overseas businesses will be required to pay GST on these sales from 1 July 2017.

Recent changes to Australia’s GST law mean that from 1 October 2016, certain transactions between overseas businesses and Australian businesses will no longer be subject to GST.

From 1 January 2017, the Australian Government will remove the upfront HECS-HELP discount of 10% for eligible students that pay their student contributions upfront and remove the voluntary HELP repayment bonus of 5%.

On Wednesday 9 November 2016 the Government introduced its superannuation legislation which makes changes to the superannuation laws it originally announced in the 2016 Federal Budget.

Transitional provisions will provide for capital gains tax relief on assets that are forced to be transferred from pension phase to accumulation phase. An SMSF that has a member’s balance above $1.6m in pension phase will no longer be able to segregate assets for income tax purposes.

The ATO has given notice that it will continue to annually acquire data from credit and debit card providers relating to payments to businesses. The ATO will obtain data for the 2015/16 and 2016/17 income years on the identifying details of merchants with credit and debit card merchant facility and the amount and quantity of the transactions processed.