472 per cent of new viruses designed to attack Android gadgets have been detected in the past four months. This is an alarming rate, especially considering that Android accounts for more than half of the worldwide smartphone sales.

Hackers hide malicious code in popular apps that consumers download, programming them to collect sensitive information such as user identity, location or personal messages. Others are programmed to generate revenue by sending premium-rate text messages without the owner’s knowledge.

These include the following:

• The addition of new industries to small business benchmarking – including landscape construction, motor vehicle retail, panel beating and smash repairers, lawn mowing and garden services, tattooing services and pharmacy.
• The addition of total expenses to turnover benchmark ratio – allowing businesses that don’t consistently report expenses for either cost of sales or labour, to measure their performance against others in their industry.
• Merging previously divided industries that no longer require separate benchmarks.
• Revising annual turnover ranges (ie. low, medium and high turnovers) for different industries so that businesses with similar characteristics in the 2009 data are grouped together.

It is recommended that businesses review their small business benchmarks regularly. This information is available from the Australian Taxation Office or via their website.

An estimated 110,000 taxpayers who are suspected of participating in the cash economy will be contacted by mail in efforts to deal with under-reported or omitted income, and cash transactions used to hide or evade tax obligations.

Business taxpayers will be identified through one of the ATO’s cash economy indicators:

• Small business benchmarks
• Data matching
• Allegations of tax evasion by the community

Taxpayers are encouraged to review their records to ensure they have correctly reported all income – especially cash transactions.

The free online business tool ‘Intellectual Property Explorer’ was developed to help owners identify and protect their IP assests. Users are guided through an interactive process designed to help identify IP in their business and create strategies to secure these assets.

As a result of these changes, the ATO will be offering fuel tax credits to any business which acquires, manufactures or imports duty paid gaseous fuels for use in eligible business activities.

Tax credits will apply to following gaseous fuels:

• liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)
• liquefied natural gas (LNG)
• compressed natural gas (CNG).

• Identify the most important issues, and deal with them first.
• Sort jobs in order of importance and delgate them appropriately.
• Ensure that staff are able to deal with the jobs they are given.
• Make punctuality a company policy.
• Ensure that meetings are meaningful and impose a clear-cut agenda.
• Keep distractions, such as personal e-mail and calls, to a minimum.
• Tackle the important tasks when people are at their most productive.
• Give staff rewards and incentives to encourage their productivity.
• Prepare for unexpected issues and ensure that there will be time to deal with them.

Remember, in a faced-paced work environment, efficiency equals success!

Some costs have a private component, such as motor vehicle expenses, that must be apportioned between business and private use. Other costs may be totally related to a business, such as the registering of a patent or trademark, but are classed as a capital and therefore not tax deductible.

Some examples of expenses that could be claimed however, include employee salaries and super contributions, advertising, rent or leases, bank fees, interest on loans, freight and insurance, repairs, promotions and giveaways, depreciation of assests and the costs of a registered tax agent.

For more information on what expenses are tax deductible for your business and what records you should be keeping for these, please feel free to contact our office.

It is estimated that last year, Australians spent $9.5 billion on online shopping sites, $4.2 billion of this on overseas sites. The ease and widespread access of the internet, coupled with a growing trust for online retailers, is seeing shoppers take advantage of the high Australian dollar and reap bargins from overseas stores.

While slashing prices hasn’t seemed to stem this flow, department stores are reviewing their pricing policies and trying other strategies, such as offering their online customers free shipping, in order to regain the nation’s retail loss.

With these changes in shopping trends and the growing popularity of online webstores, Australian small businesses are being encouraged to modernise their business structures to help bring some of the $5.3 billion, currently being spent overseas, back to our shores.