The APES 110 Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (including Independence Standards) has been in the news more recently as the SMSF Association has sought to secure an extension for the deadline by which auditors are required to comply with the amended independence standard defined by APES 110. There has been plenty of news, social media commentary, podcasts and discussion groups …
The SMSF auditor is tougher this year. Sorry, not sorry
We recently noticed a complaint from one of our accounting firm clients, that the SMSF auditors we were using (we switched to a panel of SMSF auditors) were making things difficult by asking for signed documents from the trustees, pieces of information to prove ownership and valuation, and generally just making the SMSF audit process a lot more difficult, in …
Selling your accounting firm: who is responsible for the retention of documents for past tax returns
In this highly evolving and moveable world, we’ve seen recently several issues related to record retention involving tax agents who have moved to other software providers, moved from desktop to cloud, or sold their practices but then needed access to the data. Instances where tax agents needed access to the data included one accountants who had accepted the client after …
Workpapers: Australian accountants dirty little secret
This week seemed to be a meeting of a number of issues that led us to consider the future of Australian taxation compliance. We believe that Odyssey completing some 50,000 jobs annually for some 500 Australian accounting firms gives us the opportunity to have higher level visibility than most firms. This week started with receiving a garbage set of prior …
Offshoring – are you caught by the royalty withholding rules?
Australian businesses looking to pay for outsource or offshore services need to be aware of the royalty withholding rules under Australia’s tax laws. For clients that are offshoring and paying a “seat lease” fee which includes rental of office equipment and software, then a payment for some of these items might arguably fall within the ambit of Royalty. As noted …
Changes to SMSF Compliance… More reporting, more automation
A couple of days ago an interesting video was released of the discussion between Ron Lesh of BGL and Peter Switzer. In the video there is plenty of discussion about the changing laws and reporting requirements for SMSF’s in Australia, and the fluid and every changing nature of SMSF’s and SMSF reporting. The ever changing SMSF laws have been the …
Cloud-based accounting and productivity tools for practitioners and taxpayers
Modern cloud based accounting software and productivity tools are having far reaching and prompt impact on the way Australian businesses process their business transactions. In this article, Sophie Hossack highlights changes from the last 15 years (pre GST) through to cloud accounting software available today, together with the massive impact this is having on not only the way accountants and …