In­stantly check your busi­ness per­for­mance

Wangaratta Chronicle - North East Regional Extra - - News -

THE Aus­tralian Tax Of­fice has re­leased its lat­est small busi­ness bench­marks, pro­vid­ing over 100 dif­fer­ent in­dus­tries with av­er­age cost of sales and av­er­age to­tal ex­penses.

Busi­nesses as var­ied as seafood re­tail­ers, brick­lay­ers and den­tists can see clearly what the rel­e­vant bench­marks are for their in­dus­try.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sioner Matthew Bam­brick said that the bench­marks are a great way for busi­nesses to see how they com­pare to oth­ers in their in­dus­try.

“Our bench­mark data is from in­come tax re­turns and ac­tiv­ity state­ments of over 1.4 mil­lion small busi­nesses around the coun­try,” she said.

“With such a large data set, things like lo­cal­ity and dif­fer­ent busi­ness cir­cum­stances are in­cluded when we cal­cu­late the av­er­age range for each in­dus­try.

“Busi­nesses can use these bench­marks not just to check that they’re get­ting their tax and re­port­ing obli­ga­tions right, but also to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to sup­port their de­ci­sions on how to im­prove their prof­itabil­ity.

“We have seen ex­am­ples such as a café bought for $45,000 that quadru­pled in value within five years be­cause the own­ers looked at the bench­marks and adapted their busi­ness, in­clud­ing a point of sale system that pro­vided much im­proved re­port­ing.

“This gave them a far bet­ter view of what was work­ing and what wasn’t, both the menu and the open­ing hours – and the changes they made sig­nif­i­cantly in­creased their profit and the value of their busi­ness.

“Be­ing out­side the bench­marks may mean you’re do­ing some­thing much bet­ter than your com­peti­tors or there may be ar­eas you can im­prove on.”

The quick­est and eas­i­est way to work out how you com­pare is by us­ing the busi­ness per­for­mance check tool in the ATO app, which does the cal­cu­la­tions for you.

Mr Bam­brick said that be­ing out­side the bench­marks can some­times be caused by eas­ily-fixed ad­min­is­tra­tive er­rors.

In ad­di­tion to be­ing a use­ful guide, small busi­ness bench­marks are also one of the tools the ATO uses to en­sure a level play­ing field.

The ATO uses tools like bench­marks and data match­ing to pro­tect hon­est busi­nesses from com­peti­tors who are try­ing to get ahead by avoid­ing their tax obli­ga­tions.

To see how your busi­ness stacks up against the in­dus­try av­er­age, visit ato.gov.au/busi­ness­bench­marks.

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