The 30 June 2025 checklist for a small business

30 June 2025 falls on a Monday. The $20,000 instant asset write-off applies to the year that ends that day, and it is settled law. It received assent on 27 March 2025, nine months into the year it covers.

Most of what follows works the same way. The rules are not in doubt. What decides the outcome is whether something physical happened by a date: an asset switched on, money landing in a superannuation fund, a decision recorded in writing. None of it can be fixed in September when the return is prepared.

The $20,000 instant asset write-off is law, for this year

If your aggregated turnover is under $10 million and you use the simplified depreciation rules, you can immediately deduct the business portion of an eligible depreciating asset costing less than $20,000. The Australian Taxation Office's guidance on the instant asset write-off sets out the conditions. The limit applies per asset. Three assets at $15,000 each are three deductions, not one $45,000 problem.

The extension spent most of the year as an announcement. It was in the May 2024 Budget and did not become law until Schedule 4 of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Incentives and Integrity) Act 2025 received assent on 27 March 2025. For the year ending 30 June 2025, it is now settled.

What applies from 1 July 2025 is a different matter. Section 328-180 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 sets the limit at $1,000, and the transitional provision lifting it to $20,000 stops at 30 June 2025. The government has committed to another 12-month extension. That is announced, not legislated. Do not plan a July purchase around it.

Assets costing $20,000 or more go into the small business pool instead, and depreciate at 15% in the first year and 30% each year after that.

"Installed ready for use" is the test, not the invoice

The law gives the deduction in the year you start to use the asset, or have it installed ready for use, for a taxable purpose. That is the whole test, and there is no discretion in it. A signed order does not meet it. A paid invoice does not meet it. Delivery does not meet it if the asset still needs installing before it can do any work.

An example. A Robina food manufacturer orders a $17,400 packaging machine on 12 June 2025 and pays for it that day. It is delivered on 27 June. The electrician who has to wire it in is booked for 8 July.

The deduction falls in 2025-26, not 2024-25. And in 2025-26 the limit is $1,000 unless Parliament acts. Moving the electrician forward by nine days is worth $17,400 of deduction.

Prepaying expenses, and the two conditions of the 12-month rule

A small business entity can immediately deduct a prepayment under the 12-month rule. The ATO's guide to prepaid expenses for small business entities sets two conditions, and both must hold: the eligible service period is 12 months or less, and it ends no later than the last day of the following income year.

Rent, insurance, subscriptions, professional fees, interest and advertising all qualify if they meet that test. Pay $24,000 on 20 June 2025 for premises rent covering 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 and the full $24,000 is deductible in 2024-25.

Shift the same period by two weeks and it fails. A payment on 30 June 2025 covering 15 July 2025 to 14 July 2026 runs past 30 June 2026, so it must be apportioned across two years even though the period is exactly 12 months.

The concession reaches further than most people assume. It is available to a business that would be a small business entity if the turnover threshold were $50 million, not only to those under $10 million.

Bad debts have to be written off before the year ends

Three things must be true, and the ATO's guidance on deductions for unrecoverable income states each of them. The amount must have been included in your assessable income. The debt must be genuinely bad when you write it off, not merely doubtful or slow. And you must have made the decision to write it off and recorded that decision in writing before the end of the income year.

Before 30 June. Not in a file note your bookkeeping team writes up in October.

An old debt is not automatically a bad one. You need evidence of reasonable and commercial attempts to recover it: reminders, statements, calls, correspondence. Formal recovery proceedings are not always required.

If you account for income on a cash basis, none of this applies. You never brought the amount to account, so there is nothing to deduct.

Trading stock: count it, then decide what it is worth

You are required to do a stocktake as close as possible to 30 June. Each item is then valued at cost, market selling value or replacement value. You may use a different method for each item, and a different method again next year. The lower the closing value, the lower the taxable income.

Obsolete stock has its own rule. Section 70-50 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 lets you elect a value below all three of those figures where obsolescence or other special circumstances warrant it, and the value you elect is reasonable. Superseded models, damaged goods and stock that has not moved in three years are the obvious candidates. The election has to be made and recorded. It does not happen because the stock is visibly unsaleable.

If you estimate that the value of your trading stock moved by $5,000 or less across the year, the simplified rules let you skip the stocktake and carry the opening value through. The estimate must be made in good faith and you must be able to explain it.

Superannuation: the deadline is when the fund receives it

Employer contributions are deductible in the income year the fund receives them. Not the year you approve them. Not the year the money leaves your bank account. Most people get this wrong, and they get it wrong in the direction that costs them.

Super guarantee for the June 2025 quarter is not due until 28 July 2025. Pay it then and it is deductible in 2025-26, which is the right answer for most businesses. If you want the deduction in 2024-25, the fund has to hold the money by 30 June 2025.

That makes the clearing-house cut-off the real deadline. A commercial clearing house holds your payment for some days before it reaches each fund, and the deduction follows fund receipt, not your payment. Cut-offs in mid-June are common. Check yours this week.

The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House is treated differently. Under PCG 2020/6, the Commissioner will not apply compliance resources to whether the fund received the contribution in the same income year, provided you paid the clearing house before close of business on the last business day on or before 30 June, gave it everything it needed to process the payment, and the payment was not returned or dishonoured. The ATO states plainly that this approach does not extend to commercial clearing houses.

Two related figures. The super guarantee rate is 11.5% for 2024-25 and rises to 12% on 1 July 2025. And a contribution brought forward into June counts towards the employee's $30,000 concessional cap in the year the fund receives it. For a director already contributing at the cap, that is how it gets exceeded.

Bonuses: commit before 30 June, pay later

A bonus does not have to be paid by 30 June to be deductible in 2024-25. It has to be committed to.

Taxation ruling IT 2534 puts it this way: to qualify for a deduction, the company must, before the end of the year of income, become definitively committed to the payment of a quantified amount of directors fees, bonuses or other such payments, for example by passing a properly authorised resolution.

Two words carry the weight. Definitively: an intention, a plan, or a discretion still to be exercised is not a commitment. Quantified: "a bonus of up to 10% of profit, to be set once the accounts are done" is not an amount.

A resolution passed in August that records a decision made in June does not work. The ruling rejects that practice in terms. The employee is taxed when the bonus is paid, not when the company accrues it, and pay-as-you-go withholding and single touch payroll reporting follow the payment.

What the list is worth, and what it is not

Take a Robina trades company with $2.4 million turnover, taxed at the 25% base rate entity rate. Before 30 June 2025 it:

• installs a $12,600 compressor and $5,800 of laptops, each under the limit and both working by 24 June: $18,400
• prepays 12 months of premises rent on 20 June for the year to 30 June 2026: $36,000
• writes off a debt from a builder in administration, recorded in writing on 26 June: $9,200
• elects a lower value on superseded stock under section 70-50: $6,500
• pays the June quarter super early so the fund holds it by 30 June: $21,000

That is $91,100 of deductions brought into 2024-25, and $22,775 less tax at 25%.

Only the $9,200 is money the business was never going to see. The rest is timing. The rent and the super come out of next year's deductions, and the equipment would have been deducted over several years anyway. The company has moved $22,775 of tax from this year into next. If it does not repeat the exercise in June 2026, it will feel the difference then.

That is a cash-flow decision rather than a saving, and it is worth making deliberately instead of by accident. Which of these apply to your year is a business advisory conversation. The mechanics sit with our taxation and compliance team: the resolution, the stock election, the write-offs and the return itself. All of it costs less to do in June than to explain in September.