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Unit 11, 61 Flynn St, Wembley, WA, 6014
08 9242 2085

Yearly Archives: 2018

Setting Up Your Accounting System

Setting Up Your Accounting System
While our focus is on advice to you after the accounts are prepared - on issues like your future-proof strategies, how to grow sales, making your business efficient - nevertheless we base our advisory work on numbers. So naturally we care very much how you set up your accounting systems. Whether your software or manual system, and your system around it is appropriate for you, whether the information is accurate (garbage in - garbage out), whether it is secure, whether it is efficient - all these details affect what our ongoing advice might be. Whether you are thinking of starting your first or new business, or whether you are dissatisfied with how you "keep your books" at the moment, it is important to set up your accounting system correctly. In order to help you we have prepared an extensive, free checklist on setting up your accounting system. (more…)...
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What Does Your Vision Statement Mean?

What Does Your Vision Statement Mean?
Let me ask those of you who are Chairpersons, Directors and CEO's of Indigenous organisations: "Do you really know what your vision statement means?" Do you know what your organisation will look like when you have got there? How will your people behave in the future - do they behave as the vision statement imagines they might? I have been helping Indigenous organisations prepare strategic and business plans for decades. All too often, I see organisations with a Vision Statement that is printed in plans, brochures, documents and written on the "About Us" page of their websites. And yet, when I ask those questions, although people might say "sure, we do," they can rarely translate their vision into concrete steps and goals to help them actually work towards their vision. All too often the published Vision Statement is a nice set of words that don't mean anything in their work. I have to ask, why don't people make more of their Vision Statement? Why isn't their Vision Statement the ultimate goal of all planning and operational management? How do you make it so? (more…)...
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Tax Updates March 2018

Tax Updates March 2018
In this tax update:
  • Bill to implement housing affordability CGT changes
  • Changes to small business CGT concessions
  • Bill to change residential property GST arrangements
  • ATO moving to combat the black economy
  • Corporate tax avoidance: ATO's latest targets

Bill to implement housing affordability CGT changes

As part of the 2017–2018 Budget, the Federal Government announced a range of reforms intended to reduce pressure on housing affordability. Legislation has now been introduced into Parliament that proposes to:
  • remove the entitlement to the capital gains tax (CGT) main residence exemption for foreign residents; and
  • modify the foreign resident CGT regime to clarify that, for the purpose of determining whether an entity’s underlying value is principally derived from taxable Australian real property (TARP), the principal asset test is applied on an “associate inclusive” basis.
The Bill also proposes to amend the tax law to provide an additional discount on CGT for affordable housing. The discount of up to 10% will apply if a CGT event happens to an ownership interest in residential property used to provide affordable housing. The main residence exemption means that CGT doesn’t apply...
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How Can Independent Board Members Add Value?

How Can Independent Board Members Add Value?
I recently had a very interesting conversation with my friend, an independent Board member of an Indigenous corporation that I consult to. I think he is a very valuable Board member, contributing sound advice from his experience of business in general, his knowledge of good governance practice, and from his personal knowledge of the pastoral industry sector that the corporation was in. Yet, in our conversation we spoke about how the corporation was not progressing, for a variety of reasons including the inability to resource enough talent as full time employees. He made the statement: "It's something I struggle with, how an independent Board member can actually add value to an organisation and not just 'advise' at a strategic Board level; and even more generally how a Board itself can add real value to the organisation." (more…)...
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OTS Management