Taxation

The need to register for taxation purposes will depend on what type of structure has been chosen. Most formalities can be handled easily by your accountant, including applications and lodgments.

The bare essential taxation requirement is an ABN, regardless of how you intend to trade. You will need this to open a bank account into which your start-up capital will be deposited.

Ongoing, you will have annual tax returns which can be handled by your accountant and also BAS (business activity statements) which usually are due every three months. BAS are quite easy forms if you do bookwork on a monthly basis, which is a good discipline to get used to, using simple accounting software.

I recommend you manage BAS yourself. Most software will output all the relative figures in a standard report so it’s easy. But the reason to do it yourself is it represents a mini interim financial report on the macro performance of your business. Key indicators of income, expenditure, domestic/export sales, and capital investment are all calculated. It can give you a momentary overview of the business every three months, very useful if you are busy and don’t run reports very often.

In some instances, particularly for small loans, BAS can be accepted as substitutes for certified financials (P&L, balance sheet, tax returns). BAS type data is also much easier to pull together on an adhoc basis, especially if you are a little behind in your tax returns and recent accountancy reports.

Good to go!

Now you’ve achieved some pretty valuable things;

– Identified the opportunity
– Quantified the offer
– Chosen the vehicle
– Set the course

You are ready to get out there and start talking with suppliers, collaborators, bankers, investors, customers etc, etc. But there is one more critical thing that you won’t find much about in business books.

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