4.1 Urgent and immediate

 GST Start-Up Assistance Office

Getting ready now to stay ahead of your competitors

  

You must decide what actions to take to get your business ready for operating in the GST environment. You can use this four step approach to get started:

Kickstart, React Quickly, Focus you actions, Make it happen

Kickstart

The first action is to decide who takes responsibility for doing kickstarting. If you or your staff take on this role then consider getting assistance from others, e.g. professional advisers, business colleagues or associations or friends.

There are pros and cons of each as you can check in this table:
You or someone in your business Someone outside your business
Pros Cons
Pros Cons
You will be able to
learn more about your business
understand how the GST impacts on your business
speak 'business & GST' with others
take charge of the plan as you know the most about your business
The job will:
be time consuming
take focus off your other daily tasks
not appeal to everyone
You will have:
time to concentrate on other areas of your business
ability to evaluate the effectiveness of the progress as you are not as close to the 'coal-face'
You may not:
learn as much about your business
get appropriate results as their values and areas of importance may be different from yours
get the long-term benefits of learning about how your business works


   5.3
 Information sources

   There are many areas where help can be found:

ATO website and other publications
professionals who provide reliable information and advice
industry associations that know your business and how the GST specifically applies to your business.

The second action to kickstarting is deciding if you will register for GST.

   3.2
 Registration

  

Registered, or not? Act now

Most businesses must register, some have a choice.

If you have the choice you need to start to make the decision now - use this checklist to get started.



 
 
Work out annual turnover
 
if greater than $50,000 (or greater than $100,000 for non-profit organisations) you MUST register, go to
if less than $50,000 (or less than $100,000 for non-profit organisations) you NEED to decide whether or not to register
Assess who your customers are
 
decide to register - go to
decide not to register - you may need to still do
Decide on which accounting basis to use (if you have a choice)
Decide on which tax period to use
Register for GST
 
mail
internet
tax agent/accountant
Register for ABN
 


   3.4
 Legal impact

  

React quickly

You will need to analyse your business inflows and outflows. This can be done by using the Urgent Actions templates which follow.

We have included sample templates completed by the owner of a small engineering consultancy and blank ones for you to fill out.

You will also need to react quickly to review existing contracts and their implications and you should establish a list of all your legal contracts.
   4.2
 Action decisions

  

Focus your actions

Focus your actions on:

selling
buying
recording
survival
legal


   4.3
 Action planning

   Make it happen by working out:

what to do
who will do it
how it gets done
when it needs to get done by.