It is mid-August. For most Melbourne and Brisbane business owners, the return for the year that just closed is sitting with the accountant, or already lodged.
That work is compliance. It reports what happened. Every decision it describes was made months ago, and none of them can be changed now.
Meanwhile the year that will produce next winter’s tax bill started on 1 July. Six weeks of it are already gone. For a lot of businesses, nobody has had a single conversation about it.
One example that shows the gap
Suppose you are thinking about buying a piece of equipment this year.
The instant asset write-off has been the reflex answer for years: under the limit, deduct it immediately. Here is what the ATO’s published table actually shows today, for businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million that use the simplified depreciation rules:
Date range for when asset first used or installed ready for use: 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2026 — Limit: $20,000
Source: ATO, Instant asset write-off, table 1. Retrieved 13 August 2026.
Read the date range again. It stops at 30 June 2026. The income year we are currently in is not on that table.
An accountant doing compliance will handle this correctly next year, when the return is prepared and the purchase is already made. An accountant doing planning tells you about it before you sign the invoice, because the answer changes what you buy and when.
That is the entire difference, and it repeats across a dozen other decisions every year.
What each one actually is
Compliance is the work that has a due date attached: the return, the BAS, the STP finalisation, the ASIC statement, the super guarantee payments. It is mandatory, it is measurable, and if your accountant is doing it on time and accurately, they are doing their job as most people define it.
Planning is the work with no due date. Nobody sends a letter when the window closes. It is also the only part where the outcome is still open, which is why it is worth more and why it is the first thing to disappear when an accountant is busy.
Compliance-only is not automatically bad service. A sole trader with one income stream and no assets genuinely may not need planning. The problem is when a business has outgrown that and the relationship has not changed with it.
The 10-point check
Go through these and mark each one raised, raised but only by me, or never come up. The pattern matters more than any single line.
- Structure review. Has anyone tested in the last two years whether your current structure still fits your revenue, your risk and who else is now involved?
- How you pay yourself. Wages, director fees, dividends, trust distributions. The mix has consequences, and it needs deciding before the year runs out.
- Asset purchases before you commit. Timing, threshold, and whether the deduction is immediate or pooled. Discussed before the purchase, not at return time.
- Superannuation as a deduction, not just an obligation. Separate from the compulsory payments your payroll already makes.
- Division 7A. If money has moved between you and your company, whether loans are documented and on terms.
- Trust distributions. Whether the resolutions are made in time and can withstand scrutiny under current ATO views.
- Capital gains before you sell. Contract date, holding period, available concessions. Once the contract is signed, the options close.
- Loan and interest structure on investment or business borrowings, and whether the deductible portion is set up the way you think.
- Cash flow against the payment calendar. Since 1 July 2026, super obligations move on a different rhythm for employers, and the annual total is the same while the weekly reality is not.
- An actual conversation before 30 June that is not about collecting paperwork.
If most of these are never come up and your business has employees, property, a company or a trust, you are paying for compliance and assuming you are getting planning.
When each conversation should happen
Timing is most of what separates the two. A rough shape of the year:
- July to September — the year is fresh and everything is still changeable. Structure, remuneration mix, and any purchase or sale you already know is coming. This is the cheapest time to change anything, and the quietest period in most practices.
- October to March — mid-year check against how the year is actually tracking rather than how it was forecast. Distributions and loan positions reviewed while there is still time to correct them.
- April to June — execution, not decision. Anything genuinely decided in June was decided too late to have many options.
Notice that most practices contact clients only in the last band, and only to ask for documents. We wrote up the June-specific actions separately in the EOFY planning checklist, but by then the list of available moves is already short.
What to ask, in your own words
You do not need to change accountants to find out where you stand. Three questions do most of the work:
- “Looking at last year’s return, what would you have done differently if we had talked in September instead of May?”
- “What is on your list to raise with me before 30 June next year, and when will you raise it?”
- “Is my structure still the right one, and what would make you say it isn’t?”
A planning accountant will have answers ready, because these are the things they were already tracking. If the answers are vague, that tells you what the relationship currently is. It does not tell you the accountant is bad at their job.
Where this leads
Sometimes the honest conclusion is that nothing needs to change. Sometimes it is that the business has grown past what the current arrangement was set up to handle, which is a different problem from poor service. If the question you are actually sitting with is whether your structure has been outgrown, the sole trader versus company comparison sets out where the thresholds tend to sit, and for larger family groups the restructure window piece covers the same ground at scale.
What does not work is finding out in May, which is when most of these conversations currently start.
Talk it through
Wiselink works with business owners across Melbourne (Camberwell) and Brisbane, in English and Mandarin. If you want a second read on where your year is heading before the decisions harden, book a 20 minute call and bring last year’s return. Most of what is worth saying becomes obvious from that one document.
Written by Lily Zhang, CPA and Registered Tax Agent, founder of Wiselink Accountants. Last reviewed: 13 August 2026.
This article is general information, not advice for your circumstances. The instant asset write-off limits quoted are taken from the ATO’s published table as retrieved on 13 August 2026; thresholds and their end dates can change, and you should confirm the position that applies to your income year before relying on it. Structure, remuneration and distribution decisions depend on facts specific to your business and should be considered with a registered tax agent.
