Cathy Walley 
Do you still own collectibles or personal use assets in your Self Managed Superannuation Fund?
If so, that’s OK, but make sure you understand the new rules and ensure that they are adhered to by 30th June 2016.
The assets in this class include items such as artwork, coins, wine, jewellery, vehicles or boats. As per the ATO fact sheet: “Investments in such items must be made for genuine retirement purposes, not to provide any present-day benefits.”
Adam Roberts 
A growing trend has recently emerged on an international scale in respect of identity theft and the coercing of confidential information from unwilling parties. Recent activity has seen an increase in the number of superfluous emails and telephone calls being made directly to taxpayers from individuals acting as Australian Taxation Office officials. These emails are quite shrewd, with correspondence being issued from email addresses such as ***@ato.gov.au.
It is important to note that the Australian Taxation Office does not communicate via email. In the event that an email is received from a party acting as an Australian Taxation Office representative, this email should be deleted immediately, ensuring that no attachments are opened. Similarly, the Australian Taxation Office will in most cases not phone the taxpayer directly. Dialogue will be conducted initially with a tax agent. The key message here is that if you receive an email or call from someone other than your LBW Chartered Accountants representative in respect of your taxation affairs, that you contact us immediately to discuss the validity of the communication.
Nick Popovski 
Even though the goods and services tax (GST) has been in place since 2000 it still provides small business owners with a lot of confusion today. The confusion is one of the reasons why the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) targets their audit activity in this area.
GST errors and mistakes can be made for a number of reason including (but not limited to) not understanding the GST legislation, claiming a GST credit where no invoice is provided, software incorrectly set up for GST and incorrectly treating inter-entity transactions.
Some common mistakes we see when reviewing the accounts for clients are listed below (note there are more examples but we just want to highlight the main ones):
