With one in five taxpayers owning a rental property, the Tax Office has issued a timely reminder that, depending on your circumstances, you may be able to claim the following expenses this tax season:

• Capital works;
• Repairs and improvements;
• Interest, legal costs and other expenses incurred when purchasing the property;
• Interest paid on the loan;
• Borrowing expenses such as:

 - mortgage broker and loan establishment fees;

 -stamp duty charged on the mortgage;

Your reportable super contributions are the sum of any of the following:

Personal deductible contributions you may have made ( Your personal deductible contributions include any personal contributions you made to a super fund for which you can claim an income tax deduction on your individual tax return.)

Promoters of arrangements to access superannuation savings has attracted ATO attention.

Except in some very specific circumstances, you cannot access your super savings until you reach retirement age (which is between age 55 and 60, depending on your date of birth.)

The specific circumstances in which you can access your super savings early are very limited and tightly restricted - these are mainly related to specific medical conditions or when you are experiencing severe financial hardship.

If you run your own business and have bought or are thinking about buying or leasing a company car, make sure you consider your fringe benefits tax (FBT) obligations.

Recent checks of luxury cars by the Tax Office found that many company owned or leased cars used by employees didn't account for FBT - resulting in some hefty tax bills for employers.

The Pension Bonus Scheme (PBS) will be closed to new entrants from 20 September 2009.

To register for the PBS you must first qualify for the Age Pension before 20 September 2009. Therefore, only men over the age of 65 and women over 63.5 years are eligible to register.

Note that you do not need to be eligible for the Age Pension at the time of registration. The pension bonus is calculated based on your Age Pension entitlement when you apply to receive the Age Pension for the first time.

Dear Client,

With the growth of our practice, it will assist us if you could ring and make an appointment for the preparation of your 2009 Tax Return.

Please review the following checklist to ensure you bring everything to assist me to maximise your refund. [ Tax Return Checklist ]

Medical Rebate: If you or your family has had out of pocket medical expenses in excess of $1,500 you may be able to claim a 20% tax rebate on the amount in excess of $1,500.

As announced in the May 2008 Federal Budget, from 1st July 2009 income tests used to determine eligibility for a range of government financial benefits will change.  From this date, salary sacrified contributions to superannuation will be counted as income for the following:

• Family assistance
• Child support
• Eligibility for the superannuation co-contribution
• Various tax offsets:  and
• Medicare levy surcharge

The Education Tax Refund (ETR) is a new government initiative to help with the cost of educating primary and secondary school children. It means eligible parents, carers, legal guardians and independent students could get 50% back on some education expenses. This includes items like computers, educational software, textbooks and stationery.

A trust is a relationship where a trustee (an individual or a company) carries on a business for the benefit of a range of people (the beneficiaries). It is commonplace for the trustee of a trust to be a company (a corporate trustee) for asset protection purposes.

The Australian Tax Office has published a Superannuation Guarantee Ruling which changes the definition of "Ordinary Time Earnings" (OTE) used to calculate employers Superannuation Guarantee obligations.

Under the ruling, OTE means all earnings from "ordinary hours of work". Salary and wages paid in the "ordinary hours of work" do not extend to overtime payments, according to the ruling.

The ruling also maintains that all types of bonuses are now to be included in OTE other than: