Luke Chemies

So your margin is going to decrease.

So if you're teetering around 60,000, you need to get some tax advice.

You're probably going to be looking at Henry, H-E-N-R-Y, or reaching out to an accounting friend that can help you and saying, how does this shit work?

I need to understand it better.

So GST is different from tax.

And to reiterate, you must charge customers and return the GST to the IRD when your sales exceed $60,000 in a 12-month period.

That's when GST registration becomes mandatory.

Now Luke, when he starts his accounting practice and is only going to do 50 grand with his sales, he still can register voluntarily if he wants for GST.

Again, this is where you're like, holy shit, why do we learn none of this?

You know, if this is all new to you, hopefully I'm bringing it to you in like a fun, informative way.

You're probably overwhelmed by the state.

You're going, shit, this is actually a simple.

concept of tax, believe it or not.

But not many of us receive this sort of education, and this is part of why I started Keep the Change to try and storytell and give back some of these lessons, just so people could get a bit closer to the education to go, okay, I better go, that sounds like it applies to me, I better go and get some more information, or at least you've got a better baseline.

Now, many people interpret this GST $60,000 threshold as when you then have a business.

There's a couple of things people say, I've got a business once I start a company.

No, you've got a business when you're making money and making profit and doing it consistently and regularly, nothing to do with setting up a company.

You can run a business in New Zealand without a company.

You could do it under your own name.

Luke could go out and be a full-time speaker under Luke Chemies here, put it into his tax return and pay tax on it.