Personal tax returns can be quite intimidating – so if you’ve recently made the move from only filing a personal return to being responsible for a small business, you might be wondering how much you’ll learn through disaster-control!

Fortunately with the help of business tax advisers, you can get over the hump at the end of the year with a minimum of fuss. For eleven months and 30 days, though, the records that go into that tax return are your responsibility. Today we look at the top tips for Sydney tax agents on meeting your obligations and maximising your return.

Keep it together

Keep all business expense and income records together in a cash book. This is usually done with software, though the manual method is still acceptable in some circumstances. Popular applications include MYOB and Quickbooks, and many Sydney tax agents will be able to train their clients in the functions they will specifically need.

Employee records

When it comes to tax time, the records that your business tax agent will need include payment summaries, eligible termination payments (to employees that left the company with benefits owing), and reportable fringe benefits. Your payment summaries will be automatically generated by all good bookkeeping software programs; if you need additional advice on calculating them (for example, if you keep manual records), Sydney tax advice agents can usually help out.

The five year itch

You need to store your tax records for a period of five years, while they are still subject to a possible audit by the Tax Office. In most cases, you will not have turned over every single record to your business tax agent, you will simply have given them a report detailing total expenses. Keeping the tax invoices and bank statements relating to your expenses needs to be done in house, for five years at least.

Keeping records for every pay period

There are plenty of records and payments that you can’t leave until the end of the year, but which must be paid either every pay period or every month. These obligations fall under three main categories:

• PAYG withholding (the tax that is owed per payment to yourself and your employees)
• GST recording obligations
• Superannuation

You may have gone to your Sydney tax agent for advice when you first started up your business about these issues – or you may have muddled through until now! We always recommend that you check in with your business tax accountant at least yearly about the state of your day-to-day record-keeping.

They may be able to point out deficiencies that would otherwise only be found when a Tax Office auditor was going through your records. They will also be able to advise you on state legislation regarding recording keeping for SMEs, which vary widely across Australia.

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