Get your receipts in order, and your I&T News mentions

Get your receipts in order, and your I&T News mentions Here’s a good reason to disclose everything to Investment Magazine and I&T News: the Australian Tax Office uses them in its audits. We know this because the subject of one of our stories once told us about an interesting phone call he had from Canberra’s finest. The auditor wanted to know why this individual was claiming a lump sum he’d received was a redundancy, rather than a termination payment which would attract a higher tax rate. “We’ve read the story about you in I&T News, and it makes no mention of downsizing,” said the beancounter. So the next time we reported on our man’s former firm, we took care to mention he had been retrenched – which in any case was the truth. A subsequent appreciative phone call indicated that the ATO matter had been resolved to his satisfaction. Still, it’s good to see the Tax Office looking under every rock when it comes to safeguarding consolidated revenue – with flooded cities to fix and a National Broadband Network to install, Australia’s gonna need every cent of it.

When super partners fall out A press release from Synchronised Software doesn’t usually send pulses racing – except among the member admin fanciers here at Investment of course. But our interest was piqued a little more than usual late last year, when we received two releases from the software vendor in as many days. They were both about Capital 10, the latest version of the super admin system that Synchronised Software has been shipping out of Box Hill since 1990. Problem was, the first release basically said how much better Capital 10 was than Capital X, the new platform which SyncSoft built for the industry fund-owned administrator, Superpartners. Well, not ‘better’ exactly, just easier to transition to – being built on the same architecture as Capitals 1 through 9, it does not require member administrators to convert any data or recreate existing business rules, as Capital X does. But it seems somebody at Superpartners didn’t appreciate this bit of free publicity. A revised version of SyncSoft’s press release lobbed into our inbox the next day, with all mention of Greg Camm’s outfit removed. Not surprising, really, given the implementation of Superpartners’ brand-spanking ‘ElectSP’ system, built on Capital X, is 19 months behind schedule as you read this.