Nathan Waters

The last few minutes were interesting… and yet again disappointing.

Last week I received a call from a guy at the ATO (Australian Tax Office), saying that my name had come up on the screen for a routine checkup.

At first I was worried that I’d done something wrong, which is pretty easy to do with all the gibberish surrounding the Australian tax system. Though I then thought I’d make use of the opportunity and jot down a heap of questions to ask which included:

1) What tax requirements are needed for online business and especially revenue from advertising? (in a partnership situation)
2) Are online earnings monitored?
3) DIY Super? … what did I need to do?
4) When doing a service (computer repair, installation etc), is it alright to print out a blank invoice and write in the details?
5) Mention that the ATO website and articles should be written in plain english… since I had trouble understanding it all and yet knew more about tax and the processes that most people at a tax seminar (which I attended) - and these people were aged 40 and over and had been running businesses for at least 3 years

And so today he was supposed to visit. So I cleaned up my room (business HQ) and spare room (work room).

Well he didn’t arrive and instead called. The checkup was basically just one to make sure that I kept all my records etc. So here I am saying “yep” to all these questions, and on the occasional one having no clue as to what it meant. I did ask what he meant every now and then and he explained it reasonably well. But again I felt frustrated at how I didn’t know the little things such as that I need to keep track of stock, bank accounts and keep a depreciation chart etc.

All these things should be simple and easy to do IF ONLY SOMEONE OR SOMETHING HAD TAUGHT ME!

Now I’m a quick learner as you can see in my resume I came dux in years 8, 9, 10 and 11. When I first started this computer business, blueyeT systems, I read through the entire ATO website… which I can tell you now is a bloody difficult thing to do. I wanted to know everything I needed to and how to do it. But did the ATO website or any website I could find do that? … NO.

These tax people and it seems anything to do with government and business is written in gibberish which only lawyers can understand!

Why not put these things into plain english, people will then know what to do, will then be more enticed to startup their own business… which equals more GST and other taxes for the government and a stronger, more healthy economy.

One of my big problems is that because I just couldn’t find any useful information in books or on the internet, with simple step-by-step guides on running a business in Australia, I then turned to my parents for some answers. Though the thing is that they are both teachers and apart from the one tutoring business, Kumon, which dad ran 5 or more years ago, they both have no clue on business requirements etc.

I remember I once asked dad when filling out a BAS (Business Activity Statement) to report GST, what the difference was between capital and non-capital purchases and which one I needed to put down my purchases in. I mustn’t have got the right answer because all my initial BAS statements showed only non-capital (which I now understand to be purchases which were bought for the purpose of resale). So when I went to the tax man at tax-time, I then had to go back through all the records and workout which purchases were capital (those bought to run the business) and which weren’t.

It’s difficult to get answers about how to run a business by 40+ year old people who are just not on the same wavelength. I remember even walking into my bank (*cough* Commonwealth Bank sux *cough*) and asking for information on setting up a business account (this was at 17 which comparing to many young entrepreneurs is a late start). The lady literally said to me that I was too young to be thinking about starting a business account. She took me into one of the rooms and began explaining the account and all the details, but the way she explained it to me was horrible. Not once did she explain what terms meant and continued non-stop rambling on in gibberish. I think she was basically doing this to alienate and shoo me away.

What I probably should have done is when first starting the business, I should have gone to see a tax accountant (tax-man) and asked him a few questions to basically find out what I needed to do. The problem with this was that the tax-man our family uses is a half-hour drive away (and this was when I was still on my Learner license), and I wasn’t too keen on talking to a 50-year old guy who would talk gibberish and make no sense, someone who wouldn’t be amused with telling a 17-year old how to run a business… and worst of all the $100+ fee per hour! I’m also a very good self-learner - hell, I self-learnt my entire software design and development course in years 11 and 12 due to a teacher who wasn’t interested in actually teaching the stuff - so I’d actually prefer to read in a book or online how to run a business.

So that’s my dilemma. Did I manage to ask the above questions? Nope, the guy seemed more interested in quickly finishing the call and enjoying a 5-star lunch somewhere.

Hopefully in time I’ll learn everything that is required in running a business both online and offline. And hopefully with a few ideas I have created as a result of this experience, I will be able to help other people (both young and old) in similar situations.

Nathan Waters
Hating tax and gibberish