The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has announced a series of administrative concessions in response to COVID-19 to assist businesses, which includes:

• deferring by up to 4 months the payment of tax amounts due through the BAS (including PAYG instalments), income tax assessments, FBT assessments and excise by affected businesses;
• allowing affected businesses on a quarterly reporting cycle to opt into monthly GST reporting to get quicker access to any GST funds;
• allowing affected businesses to vary PAYG instalments to zero can also claim a refund for any instalments made for the September 2019 and December 2020 quarters;
• remitting any interest and penalties, incurred by affected businesses on or after 23 January 2020, that have been applied to tax liabilities; and
• allowing affected businesses to enter into low-interest payment plans for their existing and ongoing tax liabilities.

In order to receive assistance, taxpayers must first contact the ATO to request assistance. If eligible, the ATO will ‘tailor the assistance package for the relevant taxpayer’.

More information about support measures introduced by the ATO to assist businesses can be found here: https://www.ato.gov.au/General/COVID-19/Support-for-businesses-and-employers/

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Working from home

The ATO has announced special arrangements this year due to COVID-19 to make it easier for people to claim deductions for working from home.

For all working from home claims for 1 March to 30 June, there are three ways that you can choose to calculate additional running expenses:

• claim a rate of 80 cents per work hour for all additional running expenses;
• claim a rate of 52 cents per work hour for heating, cooling, lighting, cleaning and the decline in value of office furniture, plus calculate the work-related portion of your phone and internet expenses, computer consumables, stationery and the decline in value of a computer, laptop or similar device;
• claim the actual work-related portion of all your running expenses, which you need to calculate on a reasonable basis.

More information about working from home is available here: https://www.ato.gov.au/General/COVID-19/Support-for-individuals-and-employees/Employees-working-from-home/

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The ATO has set up an Emergency Support for COVID-19 hotline. To connect with this hotline, contact 1800 806 218

To get the latest small business updates from the ATO, click here: https://www.ato.gov.au/Newsroom/smallbusiness/