The 25th Annual Geelong Business Excellence Award was launched on Tuesday 16 Feb 2010 at the Gordon Institute of TAFE. Briefing workshops are currently under way at various places around Geelong. The awards provide an excellent opportunity for local businesses to reap the benefits of their vision, determination and hard work by showcasing their businesses. Some of the benefits of entering the awards include:
- Chance to review how you are placed towards achieving our goals
- Health check of your existing plans
- Cost effective development of your business plan
- Raise the profile of your business
- Win new business opportunities
- Promotional & publicity opportunities
When times are tough, better businesses continue to review their processes to ensure they prosper and survive. Entering the awards provide an opportunity for you to have your processes and operations reviewed by independent judges.
The partners of LBW believe the awards are extremely important especially in current economic times and as a result are sponsors of the Tourism category. We also have the privilege of having one of our partners as being a judge of the awards.
We encourage all businesses to enter these awards as they will only benefit from the experience.
More information in relation to these awards are on the organizers website – WWW.THECOMMUNICATORS.COM.AU AND YOU CAN DOWNLOAD AN ENTRY BOOK AND A TEMPLATE TO START YOUR ENTRY.
WE STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU ATTEND A BRIEFING WORKSHOP AND DATES AND TIMES ARE ALSO ON THE WEBSITE.
BOOK IN ON THIS EMAIL ADDRESS This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. OR PHONE LIZ LOUGHNAN @ THE COMMUNICATORS PHONE: 5222 5863
From 1 March 2010 new tax agent and BAS service provider rules have come into force. These rules affect the ability of bookkeepers to provide BAS services and charge their clients fees for these services. Below is a brief summary of the new rules for bookkeepers.
“Broadly, in order to be registered as a BAS agent an applicant must have certain educational qualifications and relevant work experience as prescribed under the Tax Agent Services Regulations (2009).
In this context “relevant experience” essentially means work by an individual as a tax agent registered under the old or new law, or work by an individual which has been done under the supervision and control of a tax agent registered under the new law or the old law. Such work must comprise substantial involvement in providing BAS services.
However, under transitional arrangements certain individuals providing BAS services immediately before commencement of the new law may obtain registration as a BAS agent without satisfying the educational qualifications and relevant experience criteria.
The purpose of these transitional arrangements is to ensure that unregistered individuals and entities that were legally providing BAS services before the commencement of the new law are able to transition into the new law under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009.
Essentially, an individual will be able to register under the transitional provisions if that person was a member of a recognised professional association, a bookkeeper working under the direction of a registered tax agent or a person who provides payroll services to an employer. In these circumstances the applicant will be taken to be a registered BAS agent for a period of 2 years after the commencement of the new regime provided the required approved form is lodged within 6 months of the commencement of the new law. If that person wishes to continue to be a registered BAS agent after the initial 2 year period of registration expires, a further application for renewal of registration under the new law will need to be lodged which will typically provide an additional year of registration.
Accordingly, eligible individual bookkeepers have a period of up to 3 years from the commencement of the new regime to obtain the appropriate academic and supervised work experience whilst maintaining their registration as a BAS agent.
From a practical perspective this means that an independent qualified bookkeeper has 3 years to obtain a Certificate IV Financial Services (Accounting or Bookkeeping) qualification, successfully complete a Board approved GST/BAS course and undertaken at least 1,400 hours of supervised relevant experience. Where the individual is a member of a recognised tax agent association such as CPA Australia or Institute of Chartered Accountants the amount of supervised relevant experience required for supervision is reduced to 1,000 hours”.
Note, just recently it was also announced that professional indemnity insurance is also required for BAS service providers.
These rules are the biggest shakeup in bookkeeping/BAS services since the introduction of GST and will cause some bookkeepers to become more professional; some to become employees of their clients or stop providing those services going forward.
The ATO released this statement on their website in relation to taxpayers and accountants frustrations of current processing delays.
“We understand some taxpayers and tax professionals are concerned about the impacts the delays in processing income tax returns is having as we bed down our new processing system.
As many people would know, we had been working with an income tax processing system over 30 years old and needed to implement a new, more efficient system to provide better service to taxpayers.
We appreciate the delays do cause problems for people, so we are working extremely hard to meet our commitment to clear stockpiles and resume normal processing levels by the end of February.
Under Australia’s tax laws, if we take longer than the normal 30 days to process a return and issue a notice of assessment, we will pay interest on any refund due.
We will also do our best to process refunds as quickly as possible for people who contact us experiencing genuine financial hardship.
Centrelink also have arrangements in place to ensure people can access their benefits without the need for a notice of assessment from us.
In the meantime, we are working closely with the tax practitioner community to minimise impacts for them and their clients, including communicating regularly through a range of different channels on how things are progressing.
With a new income tax processing system in place we aim to provide an easier, more efficient service to the community.
We appreciate these delays can cause problems for people and sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.”
