End of Financial Year: What Perth Businesses Sort Out Before 30 June

There is a common misunderstanding that tax planning happens when the return is prepared. By then the year is closed and the figures are what they are. The decisions that actually move a position — whether an asset is bought and installed before year end, whether a bad debt is written off, whether superannuation is paid and received by the fund in time — all have to happen while the year is still running.

That is why the weeks before 30 June carry disproportionate weight. It is also why a rushed June is expensive: the review is only as good as the records underneath it, and reconstructing nine months of coding in three weeks is not planning, it is triage.

Knowing the position before you act

The first step is not a decision, it is a number. A year-to-date profit and loss that has actually been reconciled tells you whether there is a position worth acting on at all. Businesses sometimes spend money in June to reduce a tax bill that the accounts, once reconciled, show was never going to arise.

That means bank and credit card accounts reconciled to the current month, the debtor and creditor ledgers current, and any owner drawings or loan account movements identified rather than buried in a suspense code. Where the books are behind, catching them up is the first piece of work — it sits under bookkeeping and financial reporting rather than under year-end tax.

The items that commonly get reviewed

The specific list varies with the business, but a year-end review usually touches the same categories:

• Stock on hand, counted rather than estimated, and any obsolete items identified.
• Trade debtors, with genuinely unrecoverable amounts considered for write-off before year end rather than after.
• Asset purchases, where the timing of acquisition and installation matters, not just the date on the invoice.
• Superannuation for employees, where what counts is generally when the fund receives the contribution rather than when the employer sends it.
• Repairs and maintenance already incurred, separated from improvements, which are treated differently.
• Any private-use portion of business expenses, identified deliberately rather than left for the ATO to ask about.

None of these are levers to be pulled for their own sake. Each is a question about whether something that was going to happen anyway is recognised in the right period, and whether the records support the treatment.

Superannuation is the one with the hardest edge

Employer superannuation is deductible in the year the fund receives it, not the year the employer sends it. Clearing houses introduce a lag, and a contribution paid in the last days of June can land in the fund in July — which moves the deduction into the following year regardless of intent.

That timing is also why late superannuation is expensive well beyond the contribution itself. Where a payment misses the quarterly deadline the consequences run further than a deduction being deferred, and the ATO publishes how the superannuation guarantee charge operates. The ongoing mechanics sit under payroll and STP.

Trusts and companies have their own deadlines

Where a discretionary trust is involved, the trustee generally needs to make and document its resolutions about distributions before the end of the income year, not when the accounts are prepared months later. The mechanics of that sit with trust accounting and distributions.

Companies have their own year-end considerations around loan accounts and payments to shareholders and associates. These are technical and fact-specific, and the cost of getting them wrong tends to surface a year or two later.

After 30 June

Once the year closes, attention shifts to lodgement. Returns lodged by the taxpayer directly are generally due by 31 October following the end of the income year, while clients of a registered tax agent lodge under the agent’s programme, which usually allows more time. Which applies depends on the taxpayer, and the ATO publishes the current dates.

If lodgements are already overdue, the priority changes: the issue stops being planning and becomes the ATO relationship, which is handled under ATO compliance and lodgement support.