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What can you do before the 30th June to reduce your tax for 2023? Follow these steps and have more money in your pocket for you and your family to enjoy.

Personal Tax

Home Office Expenses 

If you have been working from home, you may have expenses you can claim a tax deduction for. The ATO allows you to claim using a “Revised Fixed Rate Method” an amount of $0.67 per work hour for the 2023 year. This amount covers most expenses from working from home, and you need to keep a detailed record of how you calculated the number of hours you are claiming. You can also claim expenses using an “Actual Cost” method – so please keep all invoice and receipts during the entire year to prove all claims. Refer to our blog for more specific information about Home Office expenses.

A second method that can be used, is the actual cost method. This would require a home office that no other members of the household use and you would need to know for example how much electricity is used for business. The record keeping for this method is onerous, but it could work out to be a larger deduction than the fixed rate method.

Superannuation Contributions

You can contribute into superannuation, a personal contribution up to $27 500, but this would including your employer contributions. So if your employer has contributed $10 000, you can make a personal contribution of $17 500.

In order to claim this non-employer contribution as a deduction, you would need to give your fund a form called “a notice of intent to claim” and receive an acknowledgment letter from your fund.

These contributions would then be taxed at 15% in the super fund if your income is less than $250 000 or at 30% if above this amount.

Carried Forward Contributions to Super

If your super account balance is less than $500 000 and you haven’t used the full amount of your contribution cap in previous years starting from  2019, you can use the previously unused amounts for up to five years as per the table below. ie You can contribute more than $27 500 into super. 

In this income year … … unused caps from these years can be applied
2019–20 only 2018–19
2020–21 only 2018–19 and 2019–20
2021–22 only 2018–19 to 2020–21
2022–23 only 2018–19 to 2021–22
2023–24 only 2018–19 to 2022–23
2024–25 only 2019–20 to 2023–24

Please check with us what your unused concessional contributions are.

Spouse Super Contributions

If your spouse’s income is less than $37 000 p.a  and you make a contribution into their super account of up to $3 000, you will receive a tax offset of $540.

This offset reduces to nil as their income increases to $40 000 p.a

Government Co-Contribution to super

The government will pay into your super account $500 if you make a non-concessional contribution of $1 000 into super and you earn less than  $42 016 in 2023.

You can’t claim this non-concessional contribution as a tax deduction against your income.

At least 10% of your income needs to be from employment or business income.

The Co-contribution will decease if less than $1 000 is contributed and as your salary increased up to $57 016.

Property Depreciation Report

Investors who have purchased an established (not brand new) residential investment property after 7.30pm on 9th May 2017 can’t claim depreciation on second hand assets. You will be able to claim depreciation on new equipment only and the building structure (Capital Works). You will need to have a Depreciation Report prepared by a quantity surveyor in order to do this.

The report should cost around $500 dollars, which is a deductible expense, but results in thousands of dollars of non-cash flow deductions over the years.

Motor Vehicle Expenses

In order to claim motor vehicle expenses against your salary income, you would need to prove that you have done travelling for work purposes.

The way to do this, is to keep a record or logbook of your travel for at least 12 weeks during the year. This record is valid for 5 years unless your travel pattern changes before then.

You should also record your odometer reading at 30 June 2023.

The percentage of work travel would be calculated from this record and applied to the total of your motor vehicle expenses and claimed as a deduction.

An alternative method where no log book is needed, is to simply claim up to a maximum of 5 000 km business travel, based on a reasonable estimate, using the cents per km method. For 2023, 78 cents per km can be claimed. 

Here is a link to a website called Driversnote,  where you can download an excel log book or even better an App. Please contact our offices should you have any questions or need help in using it. 

Prepay Expenses

If you own investments such as shares or property, and you pay up to 12 months in advance of interest on a loan or other expenses before 30 June 2023, you will be able to claim these amounts in the 2023 tax year.

You may also prepay other expenses like property repairs, memberships, subscriptions or journals.

Income Protection Insurance Premiums

If you are unable to work as result of sickness or an accident, Income Protection Insurance will replace up to 75% of your salary. These premiums are tax deductible and protect your family’s lifestyle.

These premiums can also be prepaid for up to 12 months and claimed as a deduction in 2023.

Investment Capital Gains & Losses as an Investor

If you are defined as an investor, any capital gains you may have realised during the year will be added to your salary income and tax applied to this total less your expenses. If you are defined to be running a business rather than investing, then CGT does not apply. If any of your investments have decreased in value since you bought them and you decide to sell them, you can reduce the tax you pay on capital gains by this loss. You can’t claim a loss just because the market value has decreased, you must sell the asset in order to use the loss. Be careful of being caught in a wash-sale arrangement where the ATO will not allow you to claim the loss against the profit. This will apply if the intention of the sale is to reduce a tax liability.

If your losses are greater than the gains, then the unused capital losses can be offset against future capital gains.

Even if you have only made capital losses, you still need to disclose these losses on your tax return.

These laws apply also to the most common type of investments like shares, investment properties and crypto currencies.

Hold Investments for longer than 12 months

An investor is entitled to a 50% discount on a Capital gain if they sell an asset after holding it for 12 months. If you are expecting a profit on the sale, then try hold it for 12 months and you will reduce your gain by 50%. 

Defer Investment Gains

Arrange for the contract date of sale of a Capital Gain asset to occur after 30 June 2023 as then the gain will fall into the 2024 tax year.

The contract date and not the settlement date is the key date for working out when a sale occurs for CGT purposes.

To see what you can do to minimise your business tax click here.

Should you have any questions specific to your situation, contact us at questions@accoladeaccounting.com.au or contact  Accolade Accounting on (08) 6263 4466 or (03)  9524 3145 to get further advice.