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If you don’t benchmark your profits – especially your gross profit percentage – then how do you really know if the long hours and hard work you put in are coming out to your financial advantage?
I am regularly amazed at how many business owners do not bother to benchmark their businesses. It is accepted that many accountants are not strong in this area or cannot provide this service. And yes, I will take the opportunity to say that E3 has benchmarking for thousands of businesses and can complete a comprehensive report within days of it being requested.
If you want to know more about benchmarking your business, please email me.
FAMILY TRUST TIP
New Gifting Rules
You might have heard that gift duty was abolished as from 1 October 2011. As such, many clients have questioned whether they should forgive all debt owed to them by their trusts in one lump sum rather than continue with their annual $27,000 per year gifting programme.
The advantages of forgiving all the debt in a lump sum include less compliance costs as there will be no more gift statements and deeds of reduction of debt required.
However, the disadvantages include the fact that the gift may be clawed back by the courts if you are later declared bankrupt, you may lose your ability to claim residential rest home subsidies and you can no longer demand a payment from the trust should you require some cash as the trust no longer owes you anything.
The question of whether to gift all your debt or not will depend on your personal circumstances and the reasons why the trust was set up in the first place.
Total gifting is not for everyone but if you do take advantage of the new rules, you are still required to do all the annual compliance work that is required to help keep your trust assets as safe as possible.
Make an appointment with us to discuss what’s right for you and your trust.
On the 4th October we launched a new division of our company to look after trade related companies (builders, contractors, all trades and associated service industries) and who are poised for 10 year’s work from the Christchurch rebuild. The opening workshop at the Westpac Hub was a great success. Having worked with so many trades related businesses over the years, we developed a key product called BESTM8 TOOLBOX. In the toolbox are all the products and services that trades people need to have on demand to run a successful, profitable and hopefully low stress business.
We have a menu of services from which you can pick and choose, bundle into a 12 month contract and pay for on a fixed monthly basis. If you know any trade businesses that are gearing up for their share of the Christchurch rebuild, then tell them to contact me.
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Quick Quote:
Steve Gurney on Resilience.
Multisport and motivational hero
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It took me a while to realise that human error prevailed, leading to my car meeting a train on a level crossing.
Although being sponsored by Subaru (my personal choice of car anyway), I was deeply impressed to how well this car functioned and contributed to saving my life. I partly attribute my survival to the adventure sports that have taught me to go floppy and relaxed when physical danger is about to hit home.
It reminds me that from the earliest age reasonable, kids should be into physical adventure as they will learn so much from dealing with danger and the unexpected.
Read more steps on resilience:
Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Step 4
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| Quotes |
If you are in business it is your social responsibility to make a profit and pay your fair share of tax (but not a dollar more of course). If you go belly up, you also jeopardise other’s survival. - Me
82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. - Steven Wright |
| Hoax Emails |
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Hoax emails continue to do the rounds purporting to come from the IRD, banks, TradeMe and so on. Most legitimate organisations do not ask you to reset passwords, email information or ask you to click on sites to verify something. Most hoaxes give themselves away by poor sentence construction or misspellings and layout errors. Delete everything that hints of a hoax and do not open it.
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| Something to Remember |
Researchers studying top contestants at the annual World Memory Championships found no evidence that they had any differences in brain structure or had higher IQs. They did have show activity in three key areas during memory tests, though. These areas are normally active during navigation tasks and movement.
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| TAX CALENDAR |
October 28
2nd instalment of 2012 provisional tax for those who pay GST twice a year. (All March balance dates)
November 28
1st instalment of 2012 provisional tax (June balance dates)
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