Ensuring Digital Signature Lawfulness for Payroll Deduction Authorization in Australia

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Payroll Deduction Authorization in Australia

it's tax time here in Australia which means it's time for my annual how to maximize your tax return video there's been some major changes this year when it comes to tax so it's more important than ever that you're on top of these changes so that you can not only maximize your tax return but also reduce your audit risk my first tip is around the home office tax changes and this is one of the biggest changes that we've had for tax returns this year and it is so important that you understand the two different methods that you've got to choose from and the changes compared to last year the ATO specifically said do not just copy and paste what you did last year so we do have two separate methods that are available we have the actual cost method and we also have the fixed rate method now you will notice that there is no shortcut method which a lot of people use last year the atos now scrapped this and we left with just these two methods the good thing is though you can pick which one suits your situation best now I have done a full video on this topic if you want to go and check this one out so let's run through these two methods so the actual cost method involves you claiming the actual work related percentage of all of your expenses so this is going to include things like your phone your internet your electricity and gas costs which we'll get to later any depreciation on any items such as laptop or Furniture you're going to claim the actual work related percentage of this the chance with this method is the record keeping side so you're going to need to know what the actual percentage is so for something like your phone you're going to need to keep a four week diary on the work later percentage you might determine This Is 50 usage your phone might have cost you 960 dollars for the year you'll claim 50 so you'll get a claim of 480 you need to use this same logic for all of your expenses the challenge though becomes electricity and gas costs because you need to work out what is in your room in your home office that is utilizing electricity and gas such as an air conditioner or maybe it's your computer what their kilowatt per hour usage is and then what your rate is based on your electricity bill it's a bit of a complex method it's my biggest issue with the actual cost method now the more simple of the two methods is the fixed rate method so this method involves you claiming a fixed rate which is 67 cents per hour based on the number of hours you've worked from home now they have changed some of these rules and you do now need to keep a record of all of your hours that you've worked for the year you can't just estimate this over a four week period and expand like you previously could now This Record of hours could be in the form of timesheets or maybe it's in your calendar where you can show how many hours you've actually worked each day throughout the year to get to your total hours you then times that by the cents per hour rate which is the 67 cents and that will get you your total claim so for instance if you're a full-time worker working 38 hours a week across 48 weeks of the year your total maximum claim under this method is going to be one thousand two hundred twenty two dollars now you want to compare this to what it would be under the actual cost method which for instance if your phone and internet is going to be say 1200 a year each so you might have 2 400 and you're using them 50 for work later purpose that's already 1 200 there alone without getting into any of your other expenses now for the fixed rate method it's really important to understand what this rate incorporates so this rate incorporate write things like internet phone electricity and gas computer consumables and stationery it doesn't include things though however such as declining value for computers and furniture and repairs of those assets and cleaning if you have a dedicated home office so it's really important to understand these inclusions and what's excluded when doing your calculations so at a basic level the actual cost method will be great for those that have a lot of costs and particularly those that are using their phone and internet for work later purposes the fixed rate method will be great for those that don't do a lot of hours from home or don't have a lot of additional costs maybe you get a work phone provided for instance and therefore your total costs are lower and therefore the fixed rate might be better for you so do the calculations for both method and pick which one is going to maximize your return my second tip is around finding all of your deductions the easiest way to maximize your return is to claim everything you're entitled to claim the challenge for some people though is finding all of those records many times I've sat with clients ask them what have you got to claim and they go oh yeah I did spend some money on this but I can't remember how much it was and I can't find the receipt and therefore they miss out on claiming it so obviously the easiest way to deal with this is to have a system ongoing for your receipts whether it's something digital such as scanning and saving in maybe a Google drive or a Dropbox or maybe use the ATO my deductions app where you can scan and save your receipts there or maybe you just keep them in a folder at home whatever your method if you can keep consistent with this it'll make sure that you've got all of your records collated in one place what happens though if you haven't done this how can you find all these deductions one of my tips for finding deductions that you might have had throughout the year is searching in your emails for the words tax invoice this hopefully will find any receipts that maybe you've got throughout the year now a lot of these may be personal but you might find a few in there that you go oh yeah I did buy that full work related purposes if you also know the place that you spent the money but you can't remember the amount search that in your internet banking or go through your bank statement and try and find these amounts at the other day if they're legitimate work related expenses you want to find them all because they're the easiest way to genuinely maximize your tax return Now record keeping hasn't been your friend this next tip is great because it actually requires was less record keeping than most other areas and that is car expenses the good thing with car expenses is if you use the Cent per kilometer method you don't need as strenuous record keeping as something like the logbook method and this is because all we need to know is how many kilometers do we do for work later purposes and this can be quite easy to go back and track especially if you haven't got a huge amount of kilometers so for instance you might have made a trip out of town where you can simply go to Google Maps put in your starting location so maybe I started here in Adelaide and maybe I went back to my old hometown of Port Perry so I can search that in work out how many kilometers that is and therefore I know that I did that chip twice it's supported in my calendar to shy those trips I can easily work out my claim so I've now got my kilometers I can times that by the cents per kilometer rate which is actually going up from 72 cents to 78 cents and this will give me my claim for my car expenses so go back through your calendar or maybe you can look on your timesheets to work out did I travel all for work did I have to use my own car and therefore can I I make a claim for motor vehicle expenses in my tax return this year now the cents per kilometer method is maxed out at 5 000 kilometers for the year but if you are doing 5 000 or more kilometers this claim has gone from 3600 up to 3900 because of this change in the cents per kilometer rate so in essence you're getting an extra 300 worth of deductions now if you're doing significantly more kilometers or you've got high amounts of expenses the logbook method could be for you I have done a full video comparing these two methods if you want to go and check that one out the fourth one is tax preparation costs now you can claim deductions for your costs that you incurred to prepare your tax return so this could be simple things like your tax agent fees you pay to your account or maybe you've paid for some kind of software such as share site to track your shares or maybe you're using crypto tax calculator to track your crypto the cost of that software is also tax deductible now this is an area people quite often forget and the reason for this is is a lot of tax agents such as myself will enter this into the return before the client even meets with them because we know what you've spent event we know it's tax deductible so why not get it straight into your return so this can be a little bit more tricky for people that have switched agents and maybe they forget to tell their prior agent what they paid now while we're on the topic of switching agents I do run a tax accounting business rushock accounting and if you're looking for help with your tax return this year maybe all of this is just too much for you and you really want to maximize your return I am taking booking so you can get in touch with me via my website or you can get in touch with me via any of the links in the description of this video I'd love to help you maximize your return but if you've already got accounted or maybe you do your own return I'd love for you just to hit that subscribe button because it really helps support this channel I'm trying to get to 10 000 subscribers by the end of this year and I want to do that by providing as much value as possible to you if you've got any video suggestions leave a comment down below now let's get back into tip number five my fifth tip is understand what is taxable by understanding what is taxable you can put yourself in the position to maximize your return what I mean by this is make sure you understand what is taxable when it comes to income everyone normally knows that their employment income will be taxed but sometimes people forget that things like their interest or their dividends or maybe their Investment Properties or their business income will also be taxed themselves if they're making a profit from those things now you might be going well now I'm adding more income I'm not going to make more tax well yes but by understanding what is taxable you're going to understand what can I claim deductions against so for instance if you've got dividends coming in but maybe you've taken a loan to invest in those or maybe you're paying for software fees those things can be claimed therefore reducing your income back down you might forget about legitimate deductions if you don't understand what is taxable in the first place so if you're earning something that is taxable in most cases any deductions or any costs you've incurred to earn that income is going to be deductible now it can get a little bit more complex than this especially when we talk about business income is how that works but by understanding what is taxable you're putting yourself in the best position to therefore maximize your deductions against that income and therefore maximize your overall return now if you're looking for more ways that you can maximize your return I've put together this playlist of a range of different tax based videos I have that dive further into some of the topics we've discussed today and there's even some hidden gems in there that I haven't even got to today I'd love for you to go and check them out I appreciate you watching this video