How has it been a whole year already? It’s hard to believe, but of course chook continues to take every spare second of my time (and some seconds that aren’t spare at all!). In case you want the cliff notes, these first two photos are a ‘start of year’ and ‘end of year’ selection for you.

Charlie (Charlotte) (Chook) is now 18 months old, and since our last update has gone from sitting to crawling to standing to walking to RUNNING and climbing and jumping and swinging. She’s got a whole personality, some strong opinions, she understands every single word you tell her and frankly I think she’s the smartest thing in the world. Oh, and she LOOOOOVES dancing.

In the last 12 months we’ve also had some other sort of milestones - chook’s first hospital stay (4 nights, with COVID plus other viruses), a big flu for me recently, and Kate is currently in the middle of two surgeries (on wrist and neck) to deal with chronic pain. We’ve also had just about every cold that exists in the world (or so you would think, but they keep on coming).

To top it all off, we’re both still studying (Kate’s nearly finished, I have a long way to go) and doing our best to each find our own fitness journeys and a little bit of toddler/life balance.

On the business side, I’m so grateful to all of you, my clients, for being so understanding and generous with my delays and the fact that life keeps getting in the way of everything. For the next 12 months I’m super excited to catch up, get ahead, and generally be the responsive and proactive accountant and business partner I usually am! I’ve had to apply a cost of living update to my pricing but have kept it as low as possible.

On the ATO front, there are only small changes this year for most people (compared to the major changes of last year), however they continue to be very strict on lodgements, debts, payment plans and record keeping - the pendulum has well and truly swung away from the gentle, softly-softly approach of COVID times. In my opinion they have swung the pendulum too far - attempting to ‘catch up’ from some COVID backlogs, but in doing so ignoring the difficulties of the current economic circumstances for the vast majority of taxpayers doing their best.

With that said - tax cuts started yesterday! If you’re an employee (on wages) you’ll see an immediate change in your take-home pay this month, but you won’t necessarily see larger refunds in future - instead you get a few more dollars every pay cycle instead. If you’re self-employed, you will see a reduction in the ‘bottom line’ number of your tax payable from the 2025 financial year onwards.

The gallery below includes a selection of other photos of chooky and our family from the last year for you to enjoy - keep an eye out for Gran the tax contractor, and Jacqui the office manager/magician!