Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Now cash management is always on the to-do list of small business owners. But among chasing
invoices, keeping on top of bills and everything in between, it's easy to get slack at tracking
tax. Thankfully, we have a pretty helpful and understanding Tax Office here in Australia.
I caught up with the Tax Commissioner to get a run down of the resources available for
small businesses and tax tips for the year ahead.
Well Chris, welcome. You've been in the role 10 months now, what sort of feedback are you
getting from small business owners about tax and super?
I think overwhelmingly the feedback I'm getting is that people want to see some change. They
want to see some modernisation, so maybe refreshing the way the Tax Office interacts with them.
It's a little bit surprising to me that the Tax Office is still in that old fashioned
paradigm of writing letters to people and having call centres all the time.
So what are you going to do? What are your plans?
Well there's a couple of things we've done already. We've got this new website we've
launched, which has enabled us to also launch Small Business Assist, which is an interactive
tool. You type in your question and it draws on all the information in the website to give
you an answer. There's also this after hour call back service. I thought it was quite
odd that if you're a small business and say the shop's shut, the kids are in bed, 8 o'clock
at night -- you couldn't interact with the Tax Office. Now you can. You can book a phone
call if that Small Business Assist doesn't help. We're about to launch an app for small
businesses. There's a lot of YouTube product, a lot of video explanations of things, that
people don't quite know how to access or where to go. Everyone's used to these apps on their
smart device now so just click on to that, opens up all sorts of good modern explanations
that people want.
Hang on. Hang on. You're actually acting like us! You're almost acting like a business saying
'This is what our customers want, so we have to change.'
I think for all too long the Tax Office has sat within itself and thought about how it
should interact. What I'm asking my people to do now is put yourself in the shoes of
the small business. What is it that they want?
From your experience though, what are some of the things that we need to get better at
that would make, you know, liaising with the Tax Office a whole lot easier? What are some
of the things that we're a bit tardy at that we should be focussing on?
I think just keeping up to date with things. That seems to be the biggest problem that
we come across. The largest proportion of outstanding debt does sit with small business.
Yep.
It's just that they maybe haven't got around to doing their quarterly instalment. They
maybe haven't got around to making that payment. They sort of worry about it -- it's on their
mind. Some of it is also not understanding how much help there is out there. As I say
there's Small Buiness Assist, the visits we can have to help you explain...
See our first human emotion though to the Tax Office tends to be fear. Isn't it? If
I ring up, and ask a question, is that going to alert them that I've got a problem. It's
getting over that fear isn't it, to say ok, they're here to help as well. You don't want
to take action against small business owners -- you want to help them to make sure they
avoid that.
We very much want to work with small businesses. Even if you do find yourself in a bit of a
problem, we're not there to shut you down. We're not there to make life harder for you.
So 'fess up.
Fess up, come early, we'll work with you and work out some plan to help. We'd much rather
focus our attention on the big multi-national companies that are sort of not necessarily
doing the right thing in the way they operate in Australia. That's where we think there's
a better return and more focus should be spent.
Chris, it's terrific the progress the Tax Office is making. As you say, the help is
there -- we've got to use it and don't be afraid to do it. Thank you for joining us.