June 2019 Newsletter
Home Office Expenses
If you have a home office for your business, you should be able to claim some of the running costs. It’s important to be aware of what you can and can’t claim, and the record-keeping involved in making a claim.
How does it work?
In order to claim, the space you use must be used primarily for your business. This doesn’t mean setting up at the kitchen table from time to time, it means having a dedicated space that you work from. If you are selling online and storing stock, you may also be using other spaces in your house for storage or stock maintenance. If you are making or creating products, you may be using other areas like your kitchen or workshop.
To understand what percentage of your home is being used for your business, you should work out the area in square metres. Once you have the number, you can use this to calculate what you’ll claim. So, for a 150 square metre home, where 15 square metres are used for the business, 10% of the home is dedicated to the business.
You can then claim a corresponding portion of your household expenses against your business income.
This could include:
- power
- rates
- house and contents insurance
- mortgage interest if you own the home
- rent if you are renting the home
Keeping track of expenses
Make sure you keep a record of all your expenses and retain your records for seven years. It’s important to keep your personal and business expenses separate. Consider using online accounting software so the paperwork is kept in good order.
We can help you review your home office expenses to make sure these are included when you claim.
Talk to us, we can help.
|
|
Xero Tip
Xero & Hubdoc
Hubdoc automatically imports financial documents and converts them into data to use within Xero.
You can upload your financial documents in many ways including:
Photos, such as paper receipts
Linked accounts for the automatic delivery of bills
Invoices forwarded from your inbox
You'll set up rules in Hubdoc to code and publish the data, then sync with your records in Xero.
Check out the video below to see how this works.
https://tv.xero.com/detail/video/5131051344001/hubdoc-xero
Important Dates
PAYE for May is due for payment 20 June.
GST for April & May 2019 due for filing and payment by 28 June 2019.
Provisional Tax payment 1 is due for payment 28 August 2019.
