This week we thought we’d switch back to a date in history. The installation of traffic lights in Brisbane. Starting with the end of the story. After the traffic lights were installed and switched on, it was reported that the police officer on point duty at this intersection walked off his post for the last time just as the Minister for …
Netflix Tax is coming… Are you ready?
The new GST tax is coming. There’s been plenty of news about retailers being unable to compete with imports under $1,000 not having GST, but now the government is extending GST to digital products and other services imported by consumers. Introduced as the amazing Australia “Netflix tax” back in April 2015, and a move which would “level the playing field” it …
Philippines – A race to the bottom for “per seat” costs
We recently saw a Philippines labour service provider advertise for a “seat fee” of sub Aus$200. This is certainly setting the scene for a race to the bottom for “per seat” costs. The current race is reminiscent of any overcrowded market. People smell cash, and a lot of new entrants come into the market. Prices are forced down to early …
Chatbots make a move on bookkeeping work
Bots and automation is a current theme in our blogs with recent posts discussing whether bots will beat offshoring and robotic process automation. Automation is an ongoing issue facing Australian accountants and we thought it time to look further into current market offerings from a couple of familiar Australian accounting software houses – Xero and Sage. Last week Xero announced …
Clients won’t queue … Lessons for Australian Accountants from Australia’s Restaurant scene …
In a news article last month, Sydney diners were increasingly unwilling to stand in line waiting for their dinner. With more options for dining out and online booking at people’s fingertips, fewer diners were willing to queue for restaurants. As the article notes, people are becoming less and less patient. And “People don’t even want to wait for their coffee in …
Bring the jobs home… Australian compliance heads for a wild ride…
It’s been an interesting year. First we had the surprise of Brexit, then the surprise of the US elections and now there are rumblings in the Australian market. Whilst it will be interesting to see whether jobs will be brought back to America, there is likely to be some fallout in Australia. More recently there have been headlines in Australian news: …
Robotic Process Automation – now automating near you!
This week we’re looking at RPA, Robotic Process Automation, which at first glance might seem to have nothing to do with Accounting and compliance. Ok, so let’s start with the humorous end. Announced recently, a man hacks Alexa by hooking it up to a singing fish robot, resulting in a very clever fish. For those not familiar with Alexa, Amazon’s …
Accounting Compliance gets a breather
The annual 2016 Good Bad Ugly – Executive Summary Report has just been released and there is some interesting news on the Compliance front. The Business Fitness team have pushed out some revelations contradicting the current thought that compliance is dead. In an interesting twist this year, the report indicates that while accounting firms have introduced other services into their business …
Why Australian Accountants need to be concerned about the ATO’s recent moves to tax Outsourcing companies
In the recent case of Tech Mahindra Limited v FCT, the Federal Court held that an Indian resident company which carried out IT services for Australian clients both from its Australian permanent establishment (PE) employees and by its Indian employees was liable to tax in Australia in respect of part of the income derived from the services provided from India. …
Should offshore workers throw away their timesheets?
In the Australia CPA September edition of the “In the Black” magazine, there is an interesting article on “Time out on billing”. Part of this article mentions of course the Value pricing that has been proposed by consultants to accounting firms for all of this current century, if not well into last century. Ron Baker, the founder of the VeraSage …
