I am Corinne Smith @ Altitude Advisors Ltd and will be writing a financial article each month to help businesses and people in our community. I have been working with businesses for many years and I am a business owner like many of you.

On 23 March 2021, changes to tax rules for investment properties took investors by surprise. There has been widespread commentary with more to come as the details unfold.

We hope the holiday season and the long weekends have been good to everyone. It feels like it is time to start the working year and get serious about these plans that have been dreamt up over the summer.

One of the hot topics right now is the property market so I have decided to talk about the Bright Line Property Rule that relates to the buying and selling of property, so you are all much more informed if you embark on this journey.

What is the bright-line property rule?

I am Corinne Smith @ Altitude Advisors Ltd, Director & Chartered Accountant. I will be writing a financial article each month to help businesses and people in our community. I have been working with businesses for many years and I am a business owner like many of you.

My article for October is on Moving Your Business Online. There are many reasons why most businesses are now choosing to be completely online and have no files or paper anywhere to be seen.

We often get questions about what business expenses are tax deductible, such as motor vehicles and clothing.

Motor Vehicle Expenses

If you have a vehicle that is only used for business purposes, you can claim the full running costs as a business expense.

If you use your vehicle for both business and personal trips you will need to work out how to allocate costs correctly. Travelling from home to work is a personal trip.

There are 2 ways to do this – keeping a logbook or adding up the actual costs. The logbook option is to keep a logbook of all your travel for 3 months and we work out the percentage of business use, then this percentage can be used for 3 years. No need to keep the logbook for longer than 3 months. There are apps that do this too if you don’t want to write it down.

The rate per km at present is 82c if you want to claim a mileage rate.

Leading research has revealed that most consumers like to search for information online before they shop. So if you don’t have a website, webstore or social media page, then this is a great place to start to bring your business into the online world. Most of us do this, but there are many other online solutions for the rest of your business.