Newsletters

Tax me less…. Please!

Who doesn’t want to pay less tax, especially when the costs of living are now getting a little ridiculous. For the next tax year (from 1st July 2024 onwards) most of us will benefit with quite a bit less tax taken from our back pockets. For the tax year just finished, and for the year we are about to prepare all your tax returns (2024) not much changed from the year before. But see below for the exciting changes affecting us all next tax year:

So how much really is this worth to you?  If you are an employee, you should see an immediate increase in your net wage deposits from 1st July 2024, and for our business clients your year end 2025 year tax positions will lower per the amounts below:

A few more articles are attached that might affect you concerning employer obligations, holiday homes, home office claims, cyber crime tips, benchmarking at the ATO, new business asset purchase claims and more. So please take the time to read over these and feel free to contact our office if you need any of these matters further clarified.

The forever growing team at Lidgerwoods

SOPHIE, MARC, KYLIE, LOUISE, DAVID, JACOB, DARCY, TALEIA, CATH AND JO

A new tax year awaits us all…

Tax accountants have a very unique business, in that we work very hard each year to keep everyone compliant, and amazingly it all happens again the following year. All thanks to our still growing and even more complicated annual taxation system that we have here in Australia.

So with the new 2022/23 tax season about to land on our doorstep here in Wodonga, a few quick snippets and tips that all our loyal clients should be aware of:

1. The superannuation guarantee rate rises to 11% on 1st July 2023 (up from 10.5%) – make sure the employment payroll software reflects this change. And consider paying any employee super owing before year end to bring forward this tax deduction.
2. Over 10 million Australians will likely receive a lesser tax refund this year as a prior year tax break offset (called LIMITO) is no longer adding to these tax refunds.
3. The car kilometer claim rate increases up to 78c (up from 72c) when claiming up to 5,000kms.
4. Remember to count your inventory or livestock numbers and note down any odometer readings on vehicles as of Friday 30th June 2023.
5. Annual payroll should be reconciled and the STP finalisation submitted to the ATO by 14th July 2023. TPAR reports need to be submitted by 15th August 2023.
6. A bonus deduction of 20% could be claimed on eligible business costs to support digital adoption such as portable payment devices, cyber security systems, and subscriptions to cloud-based services. This includes costs from 29th March 2022 to 30th June 2023.

A few more articles are attached regarding the big changes regarding working from home claims, rental property data matching, electronic vehicles tax breaks, and recent 23/24 Federal Government Budget announcements that may affect us all in years to come.

See you all at the Kitchen Bench (for another year once again)…

The Team at Lidgerwoods

SOPHIE, MARC, SHARON, LOUISE, DAVID, JACOB, DARCY & KYLIE

Christmas Crackers…

Our whole team here at Lidgerwoods Accountants is looking forward to having a few weeks well-earned time away from the office.

But as we move into the festive season, we just could not pass up the opportunity to show you some of the bad jokes we found in our Bon-Bon’s last year…..

How does Santa value his sleigh?
A. Net Present Value

What do you call an accountant without a spreadsheet?
A. Lost

What did the overworked asset say to the other overworked asset?
A. I’m feeling under depreciated

Why did the accountant cross the road?
A. So they could claim the travel expense

Why did the accountant fall out of bed?
A. Because they didn’t have a balanced sheet

As usual with all our newsletters, we’ve attached are some articles and tax updates that might affect your personal situation, so we ask that you take a little bit of time to read these, and contact us if you need anything clarified.

See you at the Kitchen Bench in 2023…..

The Team at Lidgerwoods

SOPHIE, MARC, SHARON, LOUISE, DAVID, JACOB, DARCY & KYLIE

“I want my tax refund…!”

Where will you spend your tax refund this year? Government statistics show that the average Australian has saved around 3% of their money in the last year (the biggest amount on record), but now with the cost of living and inflation going through the roof maybe we won’t see the same.

Luckily most taxpayers will again receive the government handout this year by increasing their tax refund with the last ever Low Middle Income Tax Offset – better known as LMITO or as we like to call it the “Scomo Refund” (now could be termed your Albo refund). This is as much as $1,500 per person if your taxable income resides between $48,000 and $90,000.

With the COVID rules somewhat relaxed (for now) we return to seeing a steady stream of clients visiting our office, and we look forward to finally seeing many of you face to face once again (after almost two years of hibernating).

Internally we have a new addition to our work family, after Jacob and his wife Jenny welcomed their first child Winston in March 2022

As usual, we’ve attached some brief articles and taxation updates that we recommend you take a few moments to read, and we all look forward to catching up with you during the upcoming tax season.

See you at the Kitchen Bench (finally!!)

The Team at Lidgerwoods

SOPHIE, MARC, SHARON, LOUISE, DAVID, JACOB, DARCY & KYLIE

Here comes 2022

Is anyone else well and truly just over the year of 2021? It really was again another tumultuous year for many of our clients and ourselves, trying to abide with so many differing restrictions and rules across our single cross-border economy. We all can’t wait for our lives to just get back to normal and it is starting to improve for most of us. But to sum it all up, it seems that most people are just tired and worn out and in dire need of a break – like our team here at Lidgerwoods.

December saw a change at our office. We can now finally see clients face to face within our office by appointment (but Mr.Andrews insists you must be double vaccinated), and we’ve now made this even more appealing to our clients by establishing a new meeting space in the back room.

Not only is this a great space to meet with our clients, it also serves as a great place for our team to chill and relax and to get away from our very busy desk space at the top of our stairs.

We’ve attached some articles that you may be interested in regarding new changes with employee superfunds, inactive ABNs, scam alerts (as usual), the new rules regarding Director Identification Numbers, PAYG Instalment variations and some common property investment errors.

The Team at Lidgerwoods

SOPHIE, MARC, SHARON, LOUISE, DAVID, JACOB, DARCY & KYLIE

A year unlike any we have ever seen…

It has been a very tough year for many of our clients (and our team here) having to contend with and overcome the many COVID19 barriers, shutdowns and border crossing headaches. An optimistic view would tell you it will all be over soon, but a more cautious view might say that we are only at the start of continuous and repetitive upheaval to ensure this pandemic is managed to ultimately save lives.

Adaptation and knowledge are the keys to existing in this very strange economy, and here at Lidgerwoods Accountants we have gone above and beyond to ensure that all clients have been able to grasp the enormous amount of various government assistance packages available.

Our office is currently open by appointment only (and of course subject to Victorian Government changes), we want to assure you that our whole team is upstairs and here to look after you at a moment’s notice when you need us.

Our team keeps growing also, and we take great pleasure to introduce you to our Graduate Accountant Jacob Krautz, who joined our firm in January 2021. Jacob has already had a few years experience in public accounting in his home town of Albury and recently had his 2nd wedding celebration with his wife Jenny (due to COVID cancellations).

Jacob Krautz – Graduate Accountant

Some important articles and taxation updates are attached to this newsletter that we recommend you take a few moments to read, and we look forward to seeing you in the new tax year.

 The Team at Lidgerwoods

SOPHIE, MARC, SHARON, LOUISE, DAVID, DARCY, JACOB & KYLIE

A DECADE OF ADVENTURE and TAX

We can hardly believe that it’s now been TEN years since Marc & Sophie opened their small office in Stanley Street Wodonga starting off in that one tiny room (see pic attached) with their select group of very loyal clients and an unknown future. A lot has happened since then including family additions for Sophie, a move to our new Hume Street offices in January 2017, and more recently the merging with WA Gould & Associates and welcoming all these new clients here during very unprecedented times.

“December 2010 – Day 1 of Lidgerwoods Accountants at our first office”

We cannot thank you (our clients) enough for being so loyal to our firm and being part of this incredible journey. Without both our clients and our very skilled team members, we would not be here today, and we look forward to the next ten years and beyond.

Attached are some articles of great interest to all of our clients that we ask you to take a little bit of time to read, including important information about recent tax rate changes and other tax compliance issues. If you need clarification on any of the attached information, just call us.

With the very unique year we have had here, all of our team are in great need for an extended rest, and as such we advise that we will be closed for a three week period over the Christmas/New Year break from Friday 18th December and re-open our doors again on Monday 11th January 2021.

PS. We look forward to seeing our clients faces once again starting in January 2021, when we expect to have our office door once again open.

The Team at Lidgerwoods
SOPHIE, MARC, SHARON, LOUISE, DAVID, DARCY & KYLIE

JobKeeper 2.0 Special Update

Thursday 1st October 2020

The Federal Government has only recently legislated extensions to the JobKeeper system, and ALL of our clients need to be aware of what is happening in this very unique space.  

Our office is here to help if you believe that you are entitled to the JobKeeper payments – this relates to both for our business clients and our personal tax clients.

For our business clients, we have been assisting you for the last six months to ensure that this system is administered correctly.  Many of you have been managing this process yourself, and some of our business clients did not qualify in the first instance to enter the JobKeeper system.

For our personal tax clients, many have been recipients of these payments from their employers enrolling in the system.  If you are not yourself a business client, we ask that you keep in regular contact with your employer to see if they qualify for JobKeeper currently and if they will be eligible moving forward.

The Team here at Lidgerwoods trust that you are all keeping safe and healthy, and we are here to help if you need our assistance.  Our office door is still closed, we are not seeing anyone face to face, and some of our staff are working from home, but we are all still here to help you during office hours (via phone, email or online means) to guide you through this truly unique and unusual health and economic situation.  Please be patient with us at this time too, as we are currently still inundated with enquiries and questions.

The attached is a very detailed synopsis of the system, and we understand that this will be very difficult for some to interpret, so please just contact our office if you have questions regarding this complex system and how it may relate to you.

We are with you, and we are all in this together.

The Lidgerwoods Team

Marc, Sophie, Sharon, Louise, David, Darcy & Kylie

Tax Time 2020 – A different approach

The COVID-19 cloud is still upon us which makes tax time this year unlike any other. 

Victorian government guidelines recommend our office door remain closed at this time, therefore we cannot schedule face to face appointments, but we are still in the office working.

When you wish to begin your 2019/20 year tax work, simply PHONE or EMAIL our office and we will get this underway for you. Your documentation can still be delivered to our office by post, or physically delivered during office hours by ringing the doorbell on Hume Street, or simply scan and email to us your records/claims.

The last three months has presented many challenges to our firm and we are very proud to advise that we have now proactively assisted more than 100 of our business clients to gain access to the various COVID-19 assistance packages and resources.  While being very challenging for us (with a ridiculous amount of change and advice provided in such a short space of time), it has been quite gratifying for us all here to help out our clients where we were able to.  We can only now all look to the future, and we trust that you keep safe and healthy.

The Team at Lidgerwoods,

Marc, Sophie, Sharon, Louise, David, Kylie & Darcy

Coronavirus Update

Friday 3rd April 2020

What a changed world we are living in as we all try to navigate the challenges arising from the current Coronavirus Pandemic, including protecting the health and safety of our friends and family, and the viability of our businesses, employment and investments.

The purpose of this quite long and extensive communication from Lidgerwoods Accountants is to provide you with an update relating to the Government's Economic Stimulus Package in response to the Coronavirus.  Our office will continue to apply its available resources to assist and support you where we can through this uncertain period as we attempt to survive the ever changing restrictions we are all dealing with.

The following is a broad summary of the key aspects of the Federal Government’s stimulus package in response to the Coronavirus, as recently announced and enacted. 

These measures were implemented via various Bills introduced into Parliament, which very quickly received Royal Assent on 24 March 2020 (including the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus Bill 2020), so as to give effect to the Government’s stimulus package.  

The Team here at Lidgerwoods trust that you are all keeping safe and healthy, and we are here to help if you need our assistance.  Our office door is still closed, we are not seeing anyone face to face, and some of our staff are working from home, but we are all still here to help you during office hours (via phone, email or online means) to guide you through this truly unique and unusual health and economic situation.  Please be patient with us at this time too, as we are currently inundated with enquiries and questions.

We are with you, and we are all in this together.

The Lidgerwoods Team
Marc, Sophie, Sharon, Louise, David & Kylie

Lidgerwoods merges with WA Gould & Associates

It with great pleasure and excitement that we today announce our merger with one of the oldest accounting firms in Wodonga – WA Gould & Associates.

This is a very exciting event for both of our practices as we share similar client values, a personal approach to accounting and an exceptional quality of work. Current Lidgerwoods clients will continue to see the same team members and work will be completed as it has always been done.

As such this should be a quite seamless transition and we welcome all past clients of WA Gould in the new year. On 20th December 2019, the offices of WA Gould & Associates in Beechworth Road will be closed, and from that date all clients will continue to be managed at our premises in Hume Street Wodonga.

Two new staff from WA Gould will be commencing with us soon, and we take this opportunity now to welcome them to our team.

Sharon Wallis (one of the two current Directors of WA Gould & Associates) is a fully qualified tax accountant with over 30 years of experience, and she will commence with our team in January 2020 after our usual office closure for Christmas.

Michelle Hampton has been the office manager and bookkeeper at WA Gould & Associates for the last 12 years and will commence with our team on 9th December 2019 as our internal bookkeeper and accounting assistant.

Ian Pearce (the other current Director of WA Gould & Associates) will be happily retiring after being a founding Partner of that firm over forty years ago.

Our merged businesses can now provide all clients an enhanced level of service with over forty years of experience coming to our firm.

This now takes the Lidgerwoods team to seven in our open office space, and we welcome all existing and new clients to our firm to drop in upstairs here anytime, say hello, have a coffee/tea and meet our new team members.

As usual, we attach a few articles that may interest you surrounding recent happenings in the tax world.

We look forward to seeing you all at the Kitchen Bench.

The Lidgerwoods Team
Marc, Sophie, Louise, David, Kylie – and now Sharon and Michelle…..

Sophie is back!

What a big year in tax and businesses it has been, with the 2019/20 tax year just around the corner.

Over the past year our firm has completed and lodged a record number of tax documents on behalf of our forever growing client base this year – over 1,000 lodgments to the ATO in the last year alone. All this was done too with our Director Sophie Wade on maternity leave since December 2019 when she gave birth to her second child Adeline on Christmas Eve.

The exciting news (especially for the team here at Lidgerwoods) is that Sophie is now back on deck and ready to assist our clients once again in the new tax year ahead.

Lots of changes are upon us this year, most notably for the employers in our client base with the new Single Touch Payroll (STP) system starting next week for most of our clients. The ATO is also looking very closely at rental properties again, and businesses now have different ‘time based threshold amounts’ for immediate write-off claims.

The biggest tax change applicable to 2019 tax returns is the new personal low and middle income tax rebates available to most individual clients, and our team at Lidgerwoods will personally advise you all on this when preparing your tax returns this year.

See you at the THE KITCHEN BENCH…

The Team at Lidgerwoods – Sophie, Marc, Louise, David & Kylie

Net ‘Present’ Value

It’s the silly season again, when we all eat and drink way too much, party too hard, and then return to work in the new year still in need of a proper relaxing holiday. The team here at Lidgerwoods are no different to this, with some of us perhaps needing a longer holiday than most!

Celebrating the silly season can be team-building and just plain fun, but a well-prepared business owner will also know that a little tax planning can help to make sure that no tax issues arise later on. Our first article (of many) attached to this newsletter outlines the somewhat complicated situation of giving gifts, we just wish the ATO would ‘gift’ us all a little more simplicity in this area.

We’d be glad to see you at THE KITCHEN BENCH anytime…….

The Team at Lidgerwoods – Marc, Sophie, Louise, David & Kylie

Lidgerwoods In Our Community

Christmas is a time to reflect and consider those less fortunate than ourselves. A rewarding way to do this is to become involved with a local community group.

One such group very close to Lidgerwoods is the Wodonga Apex Club, of which Marc has been a member of for the last 15 years. The Wodonga Apex Club is a non-profit community organisation for 18-45 year olds who assist their local community by raising funds and providing their labour to worthy causes, the most notable being the planning, construction & management of the recently built community Pizza Oven at Sumsion Gardens in Wodonga.

You can see Apex members in action at the Wodonga Carols by Candlelight event, feeding the masses with their fantastic BBQ food. They will be out in force again for the Australia Day Ceremony.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Wodonga Apex, please feel free to contact Marc at our office – new members are always welcome.

Lidgerwoods also sponsor a local Wodonga junior basketball team – coincidentally coached by Marc, who until four years ago did not even know the rules of the game! The reward and enjoyment of the kids is yet another reason why it is great for anyone to be involved in our community.

As usual, we attach a few articles that may interest you surrounding tax matters and deductions, and a really important article for all employers in our client base.

“Keep taxing on…”

The Team at Lidgerwoods Accountants – Marc, Sophie, Louise & Kylie

The Kitchen Bench

On the 30th June 2017, we hosted a huge crowd to our official office opening party. A great afternoon/evening was enjoyed by many of our clients, neighbours and colleagues. Luckily our new office has a full kitchen in the middle of it, which made catering for this night so much easier. It is also fortunate that we have a full size bath that we could fill up with drinks for the night.

A new year brings even more new changes at Lidgerwoods Accountants.

We happily welcome Kylie Sanders to our team as our Office Manager. She will be assisting Marc, Sophie & Louise to meet all your needs in the busy tax year ahead. Kylie is not new to our firm. She has been a client of ours for over 15 years, and brings a wealth of previous office management experience with her.
We have again attached some articles to this newsletter – some of which will be relevant to everyone, and some that won’t, but still worth a read.

Keep taxing on and remember:

“a fine is a tax for doing something bad, a tax is a fine for doing well”.

We look forward to seeing you at our kitchen bench over the coming year.
The Team at Lidgerwoods Accountants – Marc, Sophie, Louise & Kylie

Our brand new office!

After happily spending our first six years in business in Stanley Street Wodonga and due to our continued growth, we are on the move up……

That’s right – we are very proud to advise all of our clients and colleagues that as of 8.30am Tuesday 23rd January 2017 we will occupy new modern office premises on the first floor at:

UNIT 8, 103-105 Hume Street WODONGA

All of our other contact numbers and emails remain the same as does our PO Box, and we are only 350m away from our current location in the Wodonga CBD above the offices of GHD. We encourage any of our clients to visit us at any time to have a look at our new surrounds, as long as you can tackle the simple one flight of stairs. If you believe you may have issues accessing us on the first floor, please just call us to make other meeting arrangements.

Our offices in Stanley Street will be closed permanently as of 5pm Tuesday 17th January 2017.
We also take this opportunity to welcome Tina Palermo to our team who has taken on the role of our Internal Bookkeeper assisting our clients with their quarterly activity statements.

As usual we have attached some articles to this newsletter that may be of interest to you – so please take the time to glance your eye over these just in case something is relevant to your personal situation.

Keep taxing on. 

The Team at Lidgerwoods Accountants