MYOB AE/AO release notes—2021.0 (Australia)

Changes to Company, Individual, Trust & Partnership.

• Temporary full expensing: Businesses with an aggregated turnover of less than $5 billion can immediately deduct the business portion of the cost of eligible new depreciating assets. Corporate tax entities unable to meet the $5 billion turnover test may still be eligible for temporary full expensing under the alternative income test.

• Backing business investment and enhanced Instant Asset Write Off: In March 2020, as part of the Government’s Coronavirus economic response package, two stimulus measures were introduced to promote business investment in assets and support the economy and jobs.
• Choosing the right depreciation incentive: The government introduced the depreciation incentives to recover from the impact of COVID-19, and find out which one is correct for your client.
• New Exemption/Rollover code added to Item 18 - Capital gains to cater for Additional Housing Discount.
• Reporting aggregated turnover: Taxpayers will report their aggregated turnover by selecting their turnover range.
• Removed the question Did you sell any goods and services using the internet?

Changes to Company, Individual, Trust & Partnership, Self Managed fund (SMSF)

• New code for Testamentary trust introduced: The legislation amended Division 6AA of the ITAA 1936 to ensure the tax concessions available to minors in relation to income from a testamentary trust only apply in respect of income generated from assets of the deceased estate that are transferred to the testamentary trust (or the proceeds of the disposal or investment of those assets).
  
  

Compliance changes

• Low-income tax offset (LITO) increased from $445 to $700 and adjusts the phase out rules
• The 19% personal income tax bracket increased from $37,000 to $45,000.
• The 32.5% personal income tax bracket increased from $90,000 to $120,000
• The low and middle income tax offset is retained for the 2020–21 income year but will not apply for the 2021–22 income year and later years.

See the ATO link for more information.

Small business Tax offset

The tax offset available for unincorporated small business entities (with an aggregated turnover of less than $5m) was increased to 8% and capped at $1,000 per individual for each income year.

• New Exemption/Rollover code added to Item 18 - Capital gains to cater for Additional Housing Discount.

Items removed

• Tax offsets: Item T9 - Other non-refundable tax offset has been removed from the tax return.

• Foreign Employment Income Payment Summary worksheet. The following fields are removed due to the changes to Joint Petroleum Development Area taxation requirements:

  • Foreign employment residency status

  • Foreign employment income residency start date

  • Foreign employment income residency end date

  • Foreign employment income country of residence

  • Foreign employment income other non-refundable tax offset

Validation

• If the taxpayer is listed as a dependent on the private health insurance policy and is aged 32 years or older as of the 1st July of the accounting period, the tax claim code Covered as dependent child is only available for dependents with a disability.

• The company tax rate has changed from 27.5% to 26% for base rate entities with an aggregated turnover of less than $50 million for the 2020–21 income year. 

• The PAYG instalment calculations are based on 25% corporate tax rate for base rate entities with aggregated turnover of less than $50 million for their 2021–22 income years.

• Loss carry back offset (company returns): Eligible corporate entities can offset their tax losses against previous tax liabilities through a refundable tax offset.
• We've added the overseas country to the following addresses on the 2021 Company return front cover to enter an overseas address.
  
  • Current postal address
  • Postal address on previous return
  • The business address of main business

The prefill report from the ATO will have data and will prefill the following fields in tax:

• Payment summary (Individual tax return):
  • Jobkeeper payment data will show on the report as information only and will not pre-fill into the return. You'll be prompted to review this information and include the total JobKeeper amount with the business income.
    The JobKeeper Wage Subsidy payment will need to be included at Business income and expenses in Assessable government industry payments at Net non-primary production or Net primary production

• Work Related Car expenses: A new indicator has been included in the Individual return prefill report. Under the myDeductions in the prefill report, an informational message will display for taxpayers who have a novated lease.
  Our records indicate your client has a novated lease. As an employee, they are unable to claim car expenses relating to vehicles under a novated lease.
  

• In the Taxable payments section of the Individual return prefill report, there is a new column Division 59 Income. The column will indicate if the payment is an amount listed or described under a provision of Division 59 of the ITAA 1997? A new information message has also been added to the Taxable payments section of the prefill report.

System maintenance

The ATO is updating their systems in preparation for tax time 2021 on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 June 2021. They won’t process any tax returns during these 2 days. See System maintenance on the ATO website. 

2021 lodgment

The ATO system will accept 2021 tax forms from Monday 21 June 2021 and continue processing as usual for 2020 and prior year returns. To check whether the ATO PLS system is functioning normally or experiencing problems, see the PLS dashboard on the ATO website.

2021 tax return processing

The ATO will start processing 2021 returns from Friday 7 July 2021.

Refunds

Taxpayers should start receiving 2021 tax refunds from Tuesday 16 July 2021. The ATO aims to finalise the majority of the electronically-lodged 2021 returns within 12 business days of receipt.

We are working on worksheets for the calculation of the loss carryback in a company tax return.

• We've updated the wording to Accounting policy to include the useful life for each class of asset. This change is for all entities except Superfunds.
  • A new Non-transaction data table has been created called Accounting Policies - PPE useful life. It is a multi-record table with 2 fields.
• We've created
  • a new note for Statutory information for the address for the Registered Office as well as the address for the principal place of the business.
  • new non-transactional data fields called Registered Office Address with the picklist: Business address, Firm address, Other address. You can find Other address under Non-transaction Data > Client Details.
• In the Accounting policies > Basis of Preparation paragraph, we've replaced entity type with the client name in the sentence The (entity type) is a non reporting entity.
• We've updated the SMSF audit report to be in compliance with the independent auditor's report supplied by the ATO and approved for reporting periods starting on or after 1 July 2019 (NAT114466.07.20)

• You can now create workpapers as far back as the opening balance date in the MYOB Essentials (new) ledger, which previously was restricted to the current and previous financial year in the file.
• We've added loading screens to show you when Client Accounting is retrieving data from the MYOB Essentials (new) ledger or running specific tasks.

• We've implemented the Immediate write-off of $150,000 to be extended from 1st Dec 2020 to 30th June 2021.
• You can now apply
  • the 57.5% accelerate depreciation rate to assets as part of the backing business investment depreciation rules.
  • the temporary full expensing method to assets that have been first used/installed on or after 6 October 2020 till June 2022.