Are you living your best life?

To get the most out of life, it pays to take a look at your values — not just your bank balance.

Living your best life isn’t just about wealth. It’s about living an authentic life that aligns with your values. As we move through the first quarter of 2023, it’s worth taking time to reflect on what’s important to you.

Maybe your children’s education is the most important thing to you. Or you crave escaping the 9-to-5 grind.

You are a unique individual, and your values won’t be the same as anyone else’s. In fact, your core values might not even align with your spouse’s. To reach that enviable zone of stress-free, authentic living plus financial freedom, it’s critical to tease out the key aspects of your life that you want to change.

We take a different approach to your traditional accounting firm — because we understand to reach financial freedom, it’s best to bind it to an emotional goal. You can’t reach financial freedom, or you can’t be living the best life possible, without a starting point. So, our sessions are more like life-coaching sessions. We get a firm grasp on what’s important to you, then map out tangible goals.

First, we ask you some simple questions, through a short five minute Life Survey, to take a snapshot as to how you are tracking towards living your very best life. We call it your ‘Life Score’ and it gives us a starting point as to what you think are the most important aspects of your life – the 8 dimensions of wellbeing.

Once we understand where you are at, it’s time to deep dive one-on-one with you on your key values, then map out specific SMART goals in relation to achieving a score of 10/10 for each of those values. For example, perhaps you want to buy an investment property, make work optional or become a published author. We create the steps, timelines and what needs to be done to reach these goals.

And the best thing? Every piece of information whether it’s your dreams, goals, assets, liabilities, key documents, or an audit of your income and expenses, it all goes into your very own, easy-to-use dashboard that you can update as you move through your journey to living your best life.

Examining how much money you have, your debts, what you need to do to live the way you want can be confronting — but it’s such a valuable step in the right direction, putting you squarely on the path to living your best, meaningful life! 

If you want to find out more about this unique values session, ask us anything:

todd@northernbeachesadvisory.au

This content is not designed for the purpose of providing personal financial or investment advice. The information provided does not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation, or investment needs, and specific financial advice should be sought.

Professional Firm Profit Allocation

The ATO has released PCG 2021/4 Allocation of Professional Firm Profits: ATO compliance approach.

The guidance is not law, but it shows how the ATO will view the taxation of profits from professional firms, effective from 1 July 2022.

Definitions of certain terms used in the guideline are:

• An 'individual professional practitioner' (IPP) is an individual who provides services to clients of the firm, or to the firm itself, in circumstances where the IPP and/or associated entities have a legal or beneficial interest in the firm.

• 'Personal services income' (PSI) is income earned mainly as a result of personal efforts or skills of the IPPs, rather than being generated by assets or employees of the firm and is dealt with under the PSI rules in Part 2-42 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997.

• 'Professional firms' offer customised, knowledge-based services to clients in a variety of professions which include, but are not limited to, accounting, architecture, engineering, financial services, law, medicine and management consulting.

• A 'professional' is a member of a recognised profession. For a discussion of the term 'profession', see paragraph 33 of the Guideline.

Essentially IPPs can use the framework in the guideline to determine the risk profile of their tax structures, including how they are remunerated, and then know how the ATO will engage with them.

There are different levels of risk associated with different tax planning strategies that involve the allocation of profits (includes revenue) of a professional firm and this Guideline outlines how the ATO will engage taxpayers based on their risk profile - green, amber, red.

 The ATO has classified these risks as green zone, amber zone and red zone and will be investigating all amber zone and red zone risks and will not investigate green zone risks.

The key for IPPs is to assess what risk zone their current arrangements fall in and then forecast 2023 revenue and make changes to how they are remunerated to essentially get into the green zone.

It is important to act now to determine what zone an IPP is in and then calculate what additional tax may be required to be paid in 2023 to ensure they are in the green zone, or a zone they are comfortable with from an audit risk perspective.

Act now !