|
02/12/2007
Concept – Future of business
(The first in a series)
There is a dream!
Business people do their business and are removed from the burden and obligation of worrying about reporting stuff to government.
A key philosophy is that business is started by an enthusiastic person with a good idea.
Wouldn’t it be great to let the business owner enthusiastically keep doing the business stuff they want to do because reporting, accounting, compliance is so easy.
The Australian reality is that a person who wants to start a business then gets the first of many papers they have to fill in, and know how to fill in, and from that point on is absolutely swamped by filling in forms.
Back to the dream
Just do business
Business records are created accidentally
The records are matched to bank records
Records are checked for logic
Records sent without thinking to a gateway for reporting
Gateway may be the Accountant seamlessly automatically
producing Account, Tax Returns, useful information
Automatic, non-paper, no rekeying lodging of info with
each bit of Govt: ATO, BAS, ABS, ASIC, ASX, SRO's etc
and this all happens because the accidental business records are seamlessly accepted by each authority instead of a reworked set of numbers in yet another different format.
Who’s dreaming
Despite what you might have thought: Government.
The tax office, treasury, the bureau of statistics, state revenue offices all seem to be taking ownership of this dream.
Why dream
It’s always good to have a dream and personally I would much rather have government dreaming positive things about business people & processes.
‘cause the nightmare is horrible
Tax office and related industry research has been saying for 10 years that the number of accountants (and especially tax agents) is reducing. Consider a reduction in the number of accountants with the drastic and continuing increase in compliance obligations. So who is going to keep doing these forms?
Current recruitment information openly states that for each qualified accountant there are four available jobs. There are simply not enough people.
Current forms to be lodged with government et al do not complete themselves from natural business process. A business owner wants to record business action in a manner and for a purpose that tells them something useful
– this doesn’t happen because we have to record in a manner that allows: tax records to be created, BAS forms to be filled, payroll records to be maintained, ABS stats to be created (I nearly said “made up”)
Small business pays someone to regurgitate business action into a different record that is currently considered acceptable to form the basis of accounting records that are then recalculated on forms required by each respective authority. The real monetary or time cost of compliance is significant even if we are so used to it, it is nearly considered irrelevant or at least hidden. Paying accountants to help a business comply continue to soar.
What is the dream
Reduce compliance cost to business! Fact – stated objective by Treasury!!!!!!!
How?
Government to require one set of information
– seriously this is what Government are saying
And… that information to come from the business “natural business system”.
WHAT
dream or fairytale
My fairytale takes this to mean
Person with a good idea does business
Records accidentally happen in a way that tells business what they want to know
That way of recording is “mapped” to the governments’ new simple forms
How
Government must:
- change its requirements
- change what information it demands
- only ask for information in one form with one definition: i.e. Revenue means the same thing to everyone
- provide simple access and transmission
- let business control what gets sent to who and when
There is a dream
That dream is called the “Standard Business Reporting Programme”, a programme funded and supported
by treasury to deliver results within 3 years.
The dream is littered with: technology, taxonomies, xbrl, and stuff; but none of that can be, should be the
driver of the programme. And you should never hear those terms again. (what kind of word is “stuff”)
It is about “making it easier for business!”
Next issue – “A great dream “maybe” but what about the bookkeeper” Should the bookkeeper be saying
wakeup and stop dreaming?
To download the PDF of this concept, click here
|
