The ATO is watching your professional clients to see if they comply with the guidelines in PCG 2021/4 when allocating profits to individual practitioners. These guidelines apply to professional firms which include, but are not limited to, accounting, architecture, engineering, financial services, law, medicine and management consulting.

Direct quotes from the guidelines include –

• Para 25 – they “expect you to annually assess your eligibility to apply this Guideline” and “If you want to apply this Guideline, we expect you to document your assessment of, and also to review, your eligibility as your business or arrangement changes.”
• Para 107 – they will “”monitor outcomes over a period of time”
• Para 111 – they “may fact-check your assessment of your profit allocation. If you are unable to provide evidence to support your assessment, we may undertake further compliance activity.”

This new calculator will help you to assess any risk associated with profit allocations among your professional clients. The important features of this workbook include –

1. It has a procedures checklist to assist with the process and to check on the client’s eligibility to apply the guidelines;
2. You can do an actual risk assessment for 2024;
3. And if any issues are found, you can project an assessment for 2025 with a view to making adjustments to future allocations of profit;
4. You can use just one file to assess the risk for any number of practitioners within the same firm, from one to all;
5. Automatic calculations are performed for income tax, FBT and superannuation contributions tax;
6. For guidance, the file includes a sample assessment showing how to enter data for most situations; and
7. You can copy suggested text explaining the guidelines and the client’s risk rating and paste it into an outgoing email or letter to your client.

Click here to see a video demonstration of this calculation.

This calculator cannot be used for the old guidelines suspended in 2017.

Calculations/2024/Professional Profits

There is a new menu item in our Calculations module with specific help on the following procedures which will help you get the most out of using our Excel files –

• Embedding PDF documents into your file;
• Macros (downloading and using our files);
• Using multiple windows;
• Pasting or importing Excel data;
• Pasting screen shots;
• Printing our files;
• Using tables in JobPaper files; and
• Checking your version of Excel.

Calculations/About Using Excel

There are 2 new items with ATO information in the Library module providing quick answers to common questions about rental property deductions.

Capital Allowances vs Capital Works 2024
Browse through the long list of assets in Table 3 of the ATO’s 2024 rental property guide to determine if you should claim depreciation or a capital works deduction. For depreciable items you can also see their effective life.

Library/Rental Properties/Capital Allowances vs Capital Works 2024

Repair or Capital 2024
View the ATOs quick reference guide covering repairs, maintenance and capital expenditure on rental properties. See common scenarios, likely treatment and an example of the following –

• Repairs
• Maintenance
• Depreciation
• Second hand depreciating assets
• Improvements
• Initial repairs

Library/Rental Properties/Repair or Capital 2024

These lodgement dashboards are now available for download. Using our dashboards will allow you to import a lodgement report from the ATO and matching data from your practice management system to produce an interactive dashboard capable of viewing data with multiple filters. You have a choice of up to 3 user-defined reporting levels.  Click here to see a video demonstration of these files.

Here is a summary of the features in each file –

User request

Use this cashflow forecast to project weekly receipts and payments over a 12 month period. Along with our monthly version, their features include –

• Commence the forecast in any month or week based on user input;
• Automatic calculation of GST owing to the ATO;
• Minimum cash balance warning;
• Input totals for actual receipts and payments at the end of each month or week to automatically update forecasts of closing cash balances in future periods;
• KPIs including total net cash received and minimum, maximum and average cash balances over the period are displayed at the top of the sheet for easy reference; and
• Handy graphs illustrating Net Cash Flow and Cash Balance for each month or week.

Calculations/Budgets & Projections/Cashflow Forecast

Records Checklists

New records checklists for 2024 returns have now been uploaded to Forms.  One constant challenge when preparing personal returns is getting all of the information you need up front.  Delays in completing returns breeds inefficiency, increases the time you spend on the job and ultimately affects cashflow.  There are two versions of these checklists.

A short one page version is a checklist that the client can use to either get ready for their meeting with you or to be reminded of the information you need if there will be no meeting.  Send this checklist to your clients before the job commences to ensure that there are no missing records.

The longer six page version is a fillable form that will allow the client to record all relevant information and send it to you without the need for a formal meeting.  Be selective about which clients receive this longer version.

Interview Notes

This form will serve as a checklist of the items to be considered when you prepare a personal return face to face.  One important use of this form is to ask the client to complete the “income” section of the form, with a Yes or No answer, while they wait in reception for your meeting. This will remind them of income they may have received and importantly be confirmation of their instructions to you about their income for the preparation of their return.

All forms are available for download from our site as either a Microsoft Word document, to allow you to edit the form to suit the particular needs of your practice, or as a PDF document.

Forms

Change to layout.  All calculations can now be viewed on one screen.

Calculations/2024/Asset Acquisition

New Layout  New Video

Analyse a proposed rental property acquisition by your client and advise on –

• Pre and post tax cashflow
• Weekly cost to the client for affordability
• Gross and net rental yield
• Equity at any point in the analysis period
• Investment return over the ownership period (whether still held or sold)

Or in the case of a negatively-geared property, use hypothetical information to profile an ideal property to match the client’s excess cashflow.  Tax rates have been updated for the 2025 financial year.

Calculations/Budgets & Projections/Property Investment Analysis

This handy calculator will help you estimate rental income and deductions, interest on investment loans, motor vehicle expenses and depreciation on related assets for 2025 for a PAYG withholding variation.  This year, all calculations are now in this one file.

Calculations/2025/PAYG Withholding Variations

You can now start using this calculator part way through the term of the loan by entering a start year and balance at the beginning of that year.  This update will help users move existing loans across from a different calculator.

Calculations/Division 7A Loans

Save precious time and use our trust distribution workbook for your discretionary trust distributions for the year ended 30 June 2024.

Using projected net (taxable) income for the year, you can view the marginal tax rates and income available at those rates for each beneficiary to make tax-effective distributions. The worksheet will convert those taxable distributions to accounting distributions for the trustee resolution.  The resolution forms part of this workbook.

And when the time comes to prepare the trust tax return, you can enter actual accounting distributions to calculate the individual (taxable) amounts to be shown at each return label for the beneficiaries on the trust return.

Click here to watch a video.

Calculations/2024/Trust Distributions

Click here to view an updated video on these calculators.

All HP calculators are no longer date dependant and have been moved to Calculations/Financial.

The journal worksheet in our HP schedules now includes a journal for acquisition of the asset.

Calculations/Financial

The 2024 version of our working paper file for FBT jobs is now available for download.  Updates to the calculator this year include –

• Protection over all sheets has been minimised to include just our formulas and labels or text, giving you more flexibility in adding your own data or comments;
• You can now import Excel or CSV data to any unprotected cell in this workbook with just a few clicks on that option in the Accountants menu, consistent with our other JobPaper files;
• A new Table group in the Accountants menu now allows you to work better with our tables.  Options in this group include insert or delete multiple rows, sort columns and fill down data (the latter can also be performed outside tables);
• Insert pictures, shapes, icons or screen shots in all sheets to make it easier for you to follow or review your work;
• New items in the Tools menu group include clear formats and fit or reset column widths to allow more flexibility in managing your data; and
• If you need help or would like to provide feedback, click on the Email Support button in the Tools group to open a new email using your default email program and our address and the exact file name/version will be inserted in your email.

And just a reminder that this JobPaper can be used for all employer types (taxable, exempt or rebatable) and has worksheets to calculate all benefits to be shown on the FBT return form.

You can access a video on this calculator at Main Menu/Videos or click on this link to view it on our YouTube channel.

Calculations/2024/JobPapers/FBT

With the exception of the Hire Purchase Summary and Hire Purchase Payout calculators, each calculator can now be used for any contract date on or before the year end of that calculator.  e.g. For a contract beginning on 15/02/19 you can now use the 2023 or 2024 calculator.  Previously you had to navigate back to the file for the financial year during which the contract began (2019 in our example).  The Journal worksheet now reconciles journals with the schedule.

Calculations/2023 & 2024/Hire Purchase etc

Our tax planning workbook for 2024 is now available for download.  With this calculator you can –

1. Update YTD profit to include missing items and to exclude non P&L items.
2. Project YTD profit to the end of the financial year using one of three options.
3. Make tax reconciliation adjustments to that projected profit to calculate taxable/net income.
4. Explore tax planning opportunities and calculate tax payable by all entities and individuals in the client group.
5. Account for tax on deductible payments by client to associated entities or individuals.
6. Account for contributions tax and Division 293 tax on deductible super contributions where applicable.
7. For discretionary trusts, view the marginal tax rate for beneficiaries and income available at that rate.
8. Calculate tax saved or deferred from tax planning.

For a demonstration of this calculator in action go to the video on our YouTube channel.  Make sure that your quality setting in YouTube is HD.

Calculations/2024/Tax Planning

The formulas and protection have been removed from the opening balance cells in the reconciliation sections for GST and Payroll to enable use of this working paper part-way through the year and to allow the entry of an opening balance for clients with a quarterly cycle at the quarterly section (previously had to enter at the July sheet).

Calculations/2024/JobPapers BAS

This calculator has been updated to add an “Other” column for expenses paid directly by the owner rather than via their agent –

Calculations/2023/Rental Income – Foreign

These calculators have been updated to include descriptions for borrowing expenses, capital allowances, capital works (interest was already included) and when these amounts are added to the “Other” column, you can now reconcile net rent in our calculator with the clients’ rental income schedule on their return –

Calculations/2023/Rental Income – Foreign
Calculations/2023/Rental Income – Private Use
Calculations/2023/Rental Income – Standard
Calculations/2024/Rental Income – Private Use
Calculations/2024/Rental Income – Standard