The Australian Taxation Office received an extra $445 million in the 2010 Federal Budget. Why should that concern you? Because they are using those funds to attempt to recover more than $3 billion in lost GST revenue from Australian businesses.
Among other things, the ATO is targeting overdue Business Activity Statements, under-reporting of GST liabilities, non-payment of GST debts and fraudulent tax returns, with businesses large and small being firmly in their sights.
If your business is not GST compliant or your staff aren’t up to speed with GST requirements, now’s the time to do something about it. Some form of compliance training would be highly advisable, before the tax man comes knocking at your door.
According to the ATO, some of the most common mistakes made by businesses in relation to GST are:
A contract is a legally binding agreement entered into by two or more parties, which contains three basic components:
Businesses enter into a variety of contracts all the time with suppliers, customers, insurers, landlords, financiers, partners, employees and so on.
Some of the legislation which you need to be aware of and to abide by when entering into contracts includes:
The opportunities for companies doing business abroad can be immense, but so can the pitfalls, as evidenced by the Siemens scandal, which rocked the business world to its foundations in 2006.
A number of employees of electrical engineering giant Siemens were found guilty of bribing foreign officials to gain lucrative overseas contracts.
The money was accounted for by Siemens as having been paid to foreign consultants (some 420 million pounds between 1999 and 2006), but was actually paid to foreign purchasing officials.
These cash payments included bribes for contracts at power stations in Israel, the UN’s Oil For Food program, the Iraqi government, traffic control systems in Russia and contracts for the 2004 Athens Olympics in Greece.
The scandal cost Siemens over 1 and a half billion dollars in fines and has done immense damage to its reputation.
So why did such a huge company pursue such a course of action and on such a scale?
Equal opportunity is now a business buzz word. This is largely due to the growing number of harassment and discrimination cases being brought before the courts.
It’s also due to the fact that it’s the employers, not the perpetrators who are receiving the fines, because equal opportunity legislation puts the onus of responsibility squarely on your shoulders.
If a complaint of unlawful conduct is made against one of your employees and you have not taken what are considered to be reasonable steps to prevent such conduct occurring, the damages will most likely be awarded against you, not your employee.
So what can you do to minimise your risk? Compliance training is a good step in the right direction. It will help you pinpoint areas that may need addressing in your workplace culture and will ensure your staff are aware of what is considered appropriate workplace behaviour.
As well as being required to comply with the many laws that apply to the private sector, government agencies also have their own unique obligations to meet. These obligations apply in areas such as procurement, contract law and occupational health and safety.
As a manager of a public sector agency, are you confident that your staff are meeting these obligations and that your agency is compliant? If you aren’t sure or have any doubts, compliance training would be highly advisable.
Accountability, transparency and ethical decision making are expected of those in the public sector at all times and scrutiny of the use of public monies is becoming more intensive than ever.
Procurement in the public sector is regulated by the 2005 Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines. The principles underpinning government procurement are that procurement practices must provide value for money, encourage competition, use resources efficiently, effectively and ethically and demonstrate accountability and transparency.
Your brand is your most important asset and, no matter how big or small your business, you need to protect its integrity at all costs.
The best way to do this is to ensure your employees undergo effective compliance training to make them aware of the risks their actions could potentially pose to your brand.
The CEO of Coca-Cola summed up the importance of an organisation’s brand as follows:
“If I lost all of my factories and trucks, but kept the name Coca-Cola, I could rebuild my business. If I lost my name, the business would collapse.”
So what is your brand? It is much more than your image. It is more than your logo, your design or your name. Your brand is essentially your customer’s experience and expectation of you.
Risk management is no longer an activity conducted solely by large corporations. It is now recognised as a process that needs to be incorporated into the daily operations of every business.
Risks to your organisation are everywhere, and unless you are a crystal ball manufacturer, it is simply good business practice to have a risk management system in place.
If you don’t yet have one, risk management training should be undertaken as part of a
For the purpose of risk management, risk can be defined as anything that has the potential to damage your reputation, cost you money, or threaten the viability of your organisation.
Risks come in a variety of different forms. These include:
Risk management involves identifying risks and then setting up strategies to control or mitigate them. It means asking yourself what can go wrong, how can you minimise or prevent it from going wrong, and what can you do to lessen the impact if it does go wrong?
While there are many risk management strategies, the basic steps are the same:
As well as limiting your exposure to risk, having a risk management plan makes your business a more attractive proposition to insurers, which can mean cheaper premiums and better coverage.
Risk management protects your reputation, your staff, your stakeholders and ultimately your profitability. It is no longer just for big corporations. It is a necessary practice for every business large and small, and if you’re at all surprised to learn this, then some form of
risk management training would be highly recommended.
Over the last few years, organisations have begun to realise that their reputation, far from being some intangible, unquantifiable element of their business, is actually one of their biggest assets.
A good reputation ensures the confidence and trust of all the stakeholders in the business such as customers, suppliers, investors, regulators and employees. This confidence ensures ongoing profitability and creates increased opportunities to grow the business.
Reputation is defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as ‘overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general’. Reputation can impact on every aspect of your business including:
More and more businesses are reaching out to their customers via email and SMS. And why not? It’s very cost-effective and practically instantaneous.
But if you go about it the wrong way, you can seriously damage your reputation with current and potential customers and find yourself in breach of the Spam Act.
To avoid this, any business that employs electronic messaging to communicate with customers should undertake some form of compliance training for its employees so they understand the requirements of this legislation.
In the meantime, here’s a brief look at the Spam Act and a few suggestions on what you can do to comply with the legislation and create positive relations with your customers.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge that no one else possesses is very powerful indeed.
Broadly speaking, insider trading is the use of that exclusive knowledge to benefit oneself at the expense of others.
And it’s not restricted to corporate high flyers, epitomised by Gordon Gekko in the movie ‘Wall Street’, with his famous line ‘Greed is good’.
Insider trading can be committed by anyone, including any member of your staff, who gains access to privileged information and uses it for financial advantage.
Most countries with a stock market have laws against insider trading. In Australia, it is prohibited by the Corporations Act 2001, and carries a maximum penalty of ten years imprisonment and/or a $450,000 fine.
Follow Us
Learning Management System |
Privacy Policy |
Terms and Conditions
All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2012.