For business, July is the month you need to make sure you have properly closed off the last year and can start the New Year the right way. It’s about basic accounting housekeeping at this time of year — clear out the old and prepare for the new. In a previous post, we discussed what the New Financial Year means to business, and how the changes will impact your day-to-day. Here is the essential checklist to prevent the old year creeping into the new:
- Reconcile your GST control account.
- Does the income declared in your BAS for the last year reconcile to your annual income?
- Check that the minutes for all director and trustee resolutions pre June 30 are documented and signed off.
- Make sure that your stock take has been completed and documented.
- If you have paid management fees to a related entity during the year, ensure that all of the tax invoices have been documented and that there is a reasonable commercial basis for the charges applied.
- Where dividends have been declared to manage Division 7A loan payments, ensure that there are letters of instruction on file that the dividend is to be credited against the loan account. Dividend statements still need to be completed.
- If you have cross border related party transactions make sure you have your transfer pricing file completed with all of the requirements signed off.
- Review all contractors for the year going forward to ensure that they would not be deemed to be employees.
- Get your operating budget completed for the year.
- Get your cash flow budget in place.
- Check the adequacy of your funding arrangements with your bank.
- Check that you meet any loan covenants that you have with the bank at June 30.
As there is no real time limit on the recovery of outstanding SG obligations, business owners need to take a proactive approach reviewing arrangements to ensure that the business is not exposed to material liabilities – the start of the new financial year is a great time to do this.
The underlying issue is often that employers take the contractor relationship at face value – that is, what the piece of paper describing the relationship actually says. The reality is quite different as the law is based on the character of the relationship not what is stated in writing. So, if your business has contractors (or you are a contractor) performing the same role as an employee, then it’s possible the ATO will classify them as employees for SG purposes.
A genuine independent contractor who is providing personal services will typically be:
- Autonomous rather than subservient in their decision-making;
- Financially self-reliant rather than economically dependent upon the business of another; and,
- Chasing profit (that is a return on risk) rather than simply a payment for the time, skill and effort provided.
There are a number of tests that can apply to help determine the status of a contractor – such as control, whether the worker has been hired to produce a result, the ability for them to freely delegate work to someone else, risk exposure, ownership of tools and equipment, and the treatment of business expenses, etc.
Employers cannot contract out SG responsibilities by adding fail safe clauses in contracts. And, there is no certainty that a contractor using an interposed entity (for example setting up a company and operating through it) is fool proof.
