Carry-forward Concessional Contributions

A reminder about the ability to make further super contributions and claim a tax deduction for them.
Where superannuation is paid on your behalf and claimed as a tax deduction, either by you or your employer, the maximum annual contribution is capped at $25,000.
From 1 July 2018, individuals who have a total super balance of less than $500,000 can carry forward any unused cap to the next financial year on a rolling five-year period.
For example, your employer contributed $5,000 of superannuation guarantee on your behalf in 2019 and you made a personal contribution of a fur…

Relearning the art of job seeking in a post-COVID world

Forget what you were told about going out and selling yourself.
In a post-COVID world, where opportunities for people of all ages may be reduced, there is an increased need for all of us to help and support one another to understand our purpose, who we are and how we find our next job.
We also need a different approach to how we find and succeed with new work opportunities and make the best contribution we can to our employer and our community.
To truly understand how we can make a real contribution to the success of our future employer’s business we firstly need to unde…

Trust builds the best workplaces

The old master-servant style is being replaced
Each year in Tasmania, there are around forty thousand workplace transitions.  This includes people moving from secondary and tertiary education into employment, people changing jobs and people coming back into the workforce after an absence. 
As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are beginning to see a changed workplace which is calling for a new approach to recruiting staff, built on relationships, trust and empathy.  We are also seeing the primary workplace needs moving towards creativity and innovation.  This poi…

Adapting our strategy saw our business grow through COVID-19

Lily & Dot in Hobart has just celebrated its fifth birthday, having opened its door and its online store in October 2015. The store started as a labour of love for owner Katinka Dineen and has remained true to her original vision.
“Hand-crafted, small-batch, bespoke – all the hipster buzz words we associate with the ‘shop small’ phenomenon – are at the core of Lily & Dot” Katinka explains. “It was never my intent to scale it up in terms of opening a second store in another city, for example.”
“A large part of our business model is our ‘crafterno…

JobMaker Hiring Credit – Registrations Now Open

Employers must lodge intention to participate in the scheme by 6 January 2021 if you want to claim for the period beginning 7 October 2020 and ending 6 January 2021.
To do this you will need the following information:

Headcount at 30 September 2020
Payroll for the 3 months up to and including 6 October 2020

Scheme Overview
The Federal Government implemented a JobMaker Hiring Credit scheme which will subsidise wages for new employees. The scheme enables eligible employers to claim a payment up to $200 per week, for up to 12 months, for each eligible employee from 7 Octobe…

Make way for radical jobs rethink

Pandemic has proven how fast we can change if we have to
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when our lives, livelihoods and future were threatened, we made years of progress in a few months.
We moved off-base and online. We redefined our use of time and space as we became more flexible and agile, with new ways of communicating and working together. We saw ourselves – and each other – in different contexts. We thought and acted in ways that we had previously felt were out of our reach.
Social media, news articles and politicians brought almost forgotten maxims l…

JobKeeper 2.0 – Update 10 December 2020

 
The government has announced changes to the JobKeeper payment that will extend the scheme until 28 March 2021.
These changes are summarised for you below along with some other important information.
 
Extensions
The extension to the scheme will be in two tranches:

October to December 2020
January to March 2021

What will change

Turnover tests
The amount of the payment
Payments to part-time workers
 Employees employed on or before 1 July 2020 will now be eligible

What won’t change

Other employee eligibility criteria
Notification requirements
Business participant …

What the 2020/2021 Federal Budget means for you

As expected, Treasurer Frydenberg delivered an unprecedented budget last night. The coronavirus-centric measures focus on job creation and tax cuts which aim to stimulate our weakening economy.  

The government proposes to bring forward cuts to individual tax rates and expand access to small business tax concessions as well as implement a JobMaker hiring credit which will subsidise wages for new employees. 

If the measures are passed in the coming weeks, most businesses&nbs…

Moving forward from COVID-19: Business recovery, opportunities and readiness

2020 has been a year of significant change, to the point of upheaval – far more than any organisation would willingly impose on its people and its operations.
When Premier Peter Gutwein recently announced that Tasmania’s borders will remain closed until 1 December 2020, there was a mixed response. Some people welcomed the news that our COVIDSafe ‘bubble’, which has allowed us to resume a degree of normality and business operations, will remain in place for a little longer. For others the continued border closures mean further delays, particularly those businesses t…

Chart our own course

Run our own race and become a world leader with an island strategy
Tasmania’s tough border stance in response to the COVID pandemic recently lead to the Queensland Deputy Premier Steven Miles questioning, “Why anyone would want to go to Tassie?”
However, the perception of Tasmania depends largely on who is doing the perceiving.  It is fair to say that historically there has been at times a lack of optimism, almost negativity, regarding the future of our island State.
‘Backward’, ‘depressed’, ‘losing’, and ‘parochial,’ were often heard perceptions, often reinforced …