Loooong day
So our accounts manager is off sick today... Which is really quite convenient, since we have the auditors form Ernst & Young in this week auditing our accounts (the joys of being a public company..). They picked up some huge discrepancies between our payroll and general ledger.. And since I'm the one who's been here the longest, and take an interest in everyone else's work (i.e. I like to know how people are doing things, so I can help them do it easier), I ended up being the one to do an audit of the ledger to figure out where the discrepancies were..
Four hours and a huge migraine later, I have no frigging idea.. - I've got it back from a 20% to 1% discrepancy, but I've got no idea what the rest are I swear to god Myob makes a mess of the ledger with debits and credits in the wrong places.. Or maybe I'm just too old, having actually learnt how to use one of those old 3 foot wide ledgers :)
Ahh well, ending on a high note, I then got around to phoning the ATO about what is actually allowed under work-related travel expenses, for taking equipment between home and work.. Thanks to my mate Gav for pointing that one out (he claims all his home/work travel as he works at an engineering place with multiple shifts, has to supply his own tools, and doesn't have a storage locker at work, so has to carry his tool with him..). Now I carry offsite backup drives home from work every night, swap them over, and bring other drives back the next morning. I've been doing this for a couple of years, never really thought about it as a tax deduction.. But Gav got me thinking.. Can I claim all my home<>work trips on tax??
So I phoned the ATO this arvo and asked the question.. The lady went away and chatted to someone then came back and said she had no idea what offsite backup drives were about, but there was no official ruling on what can and can't be claimed for.. I apparently have to make a self-assesment, bearing in mind that i can only claim if it's not practical to take the equipment on public transport (bus/train). Given that I live in jerrabomberra, getting public transport to deakin west is a 3-hour, 3-buschange trip, with an hour spent sitting in a queanbeyan bus shelter.. not really practical (or safe!) when you've got 120Gb firewire drives in your bag...
Plus work prefers that I go straight to/from work while carrying the drives, so I think i'm well and truly safe making an assessment that it's not practical to take the drives on public transport.. Which in turn means that I get to claim 25,000km/year of travel on my motorbike on tax.. WOOHOO :) Should be somewhere around $6-7k/year of deductions I'm figuring.. should make for a nice refund each year (and given that my insurance+rego is due in august each year, the refund will be right at a nice time :)
Four hours and a huge migraine later, I have no frigging idea.. - I've got it back from a 20% to 1% discrepancy, but I've got no idea what the rest are I swear to god Myob makes a mess of the ledger with debits and credits in the wrong places.. Or maybe I'm just too old, having actually learnt how to use one of those old 3 foot wide ledgers :)
Ahh well, ending on a high note, I then got around to phoning the ATO about what is actually allowed under work-related travel expenses, for taking equipment between home and work.. Thanks to my mate Gav for pointing that one out (he claims all his home/work travel as he works at an engineering place with multiple shifts, has to supply his own tools, and doesn't have a storage locker at work, so has to carry his tool with him..). Now I carry offsite backup drives home from work every night, swap them over, and bring other drives back the next morning. I've been doing this for a couple of years, never really thought about it as a tax deduction.. But Gav got me thinking.. Can I claim all my home<>work trips on tax??
So I phoned the ATO this arvo and asked the question.. The lady went away and chatted to someone then came back and said she had no idea what offsite backup drives were about, but there was no official ruling on what can and can't be claimed for.. I apparently have to make a self-assesment, bearing in mind that i can only claim if it's not practical to take the equipment on public transport (bus/train). Given that I live in jerrabomberra, getting public transport to deakin west is a 3-hour, 3-buschange trip, with an hour spent sitting in a queanbeyan bus shelter.. not really practical (or safe!) when you've got 120Gb firewire drives in your bag...
Plus work prefers that I go straight to/from work while carrying the drives, so I think i'm well and truly safe making an assessment that it's not practical to take the drives on public transport.. Which in turn means that I get to claim 25,000km/year of travel on my motorbike on tax.. WOOHOO :) Should be somewhere around $6-7k/year of deductions I'm figuring.. should make for a nice refund each year (and given that my insurance+rego is due in august each year, the refund will be right at a nice time :)