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Small Business benchmarks for 2012

Editor:  The ATO collects a vast amount of information, and in the last few years they have started using that information to work out what 'normal' small business taxpayers should be including in income and claiming as deductible expenses, depending on their industry.

If a taxpayer falls outside the 'normal' benchmark for their industry, meaning that normally their income does not appear high enough for the expenses they have incurred, they may find themselves on the receiving end of some unwanted ATO attention...

The problem for most taxpayers in this position is that they don't have the records to be able to prove that the Tax Office is incorrect, so the Tax Office is able to lift their income to the benchmark.  That can be many thousands of dollars.

The ATO has advised that it has upgraded its existing benchmarks with recent data.