Dust off your tax plan, the tax man is back in your neighbourhood

The tax man is back in a neighbourhood near you!

Deep inside the mountains of data attached to Budget 2013 was a warning to all business owners to get their tax planning up to date.

Current government tax revenue around $60 billion.  Forecast to increase by $14 billion from higher business profits, more employment, and higher wages. 20%+ increase over 4 years.  Well done!  Anyone associated with that forecast can be proud of their achievement to balance the books.

But......... why is there always a "but"?

Clearly everyone will pay more tax in the future. 

As history repeats itself the NZ business taxpayer will remember being here before.  Remember those huge tax bills pre Global Financial Crisis.

Since the GFC tax bills have hit rock bottom.  As a result business owners did not need any type of tax planning, because profits had evaporated.

Tax planning, traditionally provided by a chartered accountant, went out of fashion. In response,  new service providers developed a new model tax compliance industry........... a cheap and cheerful service was the way forward.

But here is the problem. With tax bills back, and rising, it will not be good enough to simply rely on the new model compliance industry, spend a few dollars with Xero or BankLink to capture the data, add a few codes and bingo the resulting tax return will do.

The Government is predicting higher business profits.  We completely agree.  We also believe it is important to provide options going forward to those businesses that clearly need more than cheap and cheerful.

Is it time to dust off your tax plan?

Give us a call as tax planning is what we do best.