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Christmas Technical Tip

ABN Latest News

Christmas is the time of year that your client’s entertainment expenditure can really be at its peak. This is an opportune time for advice on the best ways to deal with your clients entertainment expenses.

Firstly, we highly recommend reading through ABN’s Bookkeepers Knowledge Base Edition 20 on this very subject. Most bookkeepers would be aware of the three methods of treating entertainment, being: Actual expenditure method, 50/50 split method and 12 week register method. However, your clients may not have made a decision on which method they wish to use at this time.

Generally speaking, entertainment is deductible only to the extent that if FBT is paid on it. For instance, in the 50/50 split method, FBT is paid on 50% of the entertainment costs, which means that GST credits and income tax deductions can only be claimed on that 50% portion. Therefore, it’s important that accurate records are kept in relation to entertainment. If you have the ability to use the chart of accounts to provide detail, splitting the entertainment costs between employees, employee’s associates and clients is an extremely helpful thing for us and your client’s other accountants when it comes to tax and FBT time. Otherwise, using clear descriptions in the “memo” fields which provide the details on the above breakdown are also useful.

Category
ABN
Published
18 Dec 2012
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