Christmas expenses
Staff end-of-year celebrations
If you’re having a Christmas party or a get-together to celebrate the end of the year with your team, you can claim some of the costs. You can claim half the cost of staff gifts that include food, drink or entertainment, and half of your holiday party expenses may be claimed in your income tax return if the expenses are related to your business.
Client gifts
If you’re planning to send out Christmas gifts to your clients, you can usually claim the costs of gifts as a business expense. If the gift is food, drink or entertainment related, such as a hamper or restaurant vouchers, then only half of the cost can be claimed.
Charitable donations
If you’re planning to donate food or other gifts to a group in need this Christmas season, you can deduct 100% of the cost of this. So as well as doing something charitable out of the goodness of your heart, your business can benefit too!
Staff remuneration
Public holidays
As December and January both have quite a few public holidays, you need to make sure that you’re paying staff correctly. When there’s a public holiday on a day your employee is usually at work, they are entitled to a paid day off. You can also only require employees to work a public holiday if it’s in their employment contract so make sure you take another look over this before the end of the year.
If your staff are working over the holidays and their work day falls on a public holiday, you need to pay them at least time and a half, and give them another paid day off later. If they don’t normally work on that day, then they won’t get this alternative day off but you’ll still need to pay them at least time and a half for the hours worked.
If you’re preparing your business for the holiday break, get in touch with our friendly accounting team – we can give you expert guidance, advice and important tips to help you enjoy the holiday period with no stress!
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