External Factors Effecting your Business
by Colin Linke on 15/02/10 at 3:31 pm
Even the best of us sometimes get caught!
The Federal government has recently passed some legislation that will effect a lot of small businesses and has dramatically effected my business. The new Tax Agent Services Bill was passed which means that anyone providing tax or BAS related services must be registered with a new Statutory authority in order to provide those services.
The legislation is very good in my opinion as it will force bookkeepers – in particular – to be educated, follow a code of conduct and be known to the relevant authorities. It will provide a much better framework for businesses to more fully engage a bookkeeper. There is a complaint process and all bookkeepers must now have PI insurance. This is excellent news as it will weed out unqualified bookkeepers who should not be operating.
However it does come art a cost.
An industry that is already under all types of time constraints will lose a core level of providers and increase demand for the remaining bookkeeping fraternity. This will increase the cost of outsourced bookkeepers. Many small businesses will struggle to cope with this increase – if they can get bookkeepers at all.
Practically it has implications for many businesses. A real estate agent that provides management of client properties and provides a monthly statement which is in compliance with the GST legislation and charges a fee for that – via the monthly management fee – will have to be registered. In most cases they will not qualify – so what happens in this case?
An employee bookkeeper working for ABC P/L who then does work for XYZ P/L – another related business in the same building – and whose services are charged to XYZ via a management fee – needs to be registered. But they won’t qualify. Not sure this was the intention of the legislation.
For my business we have some practical implications that were not envisaged. We now have a partners meeting this week solely to try and work out a solution. Thank you to the advisors to the Federal Government for that one.
It does however highlight a significant point about business – whether small or large. Sometimes there are things that affect your business which you cannot control. No matter what planning you have done or how good you are at converting a lead into a sale – if the rules change then you have to adapt your business model and move on – or go out of business.
Small business is much better at doing this than big business – so that is the one upside for us – but it is still annoying. So whilst you may have your business humming along beautifully, beware that there are other factors afoot that may change your model and force you to adapt – but at what cost?
