ATO benchmarks · 2023-24
Glazing services: what the ATO expects your numbers to look like.
The ATO publishes the expense ratio it expects from a business like yours, and quietly uses it to decide who to look at more closely. It is public, it is free, and almost nobody in this industry has seen it. Here it is, with a way to check yourself against it.
The published ranges.
Turnover bands are set by the ATO for this industry specifically. They are not a fixed scale, so what counts as a small operator here is a different number to the one another industry is measured against.
| Annual turnover | Total expensesas % of turnover |
|---|---|
| $50,000 - $200,000 | 46% - 65% |
| $200,001 - $600,000 | 62% - 76% |
| More than $600,000 | 77% - 88% |
The ATO publishes no cost-of-sales benchmark for this industry, which is normal for service businesses where most of the cost is labour rather than stock.
Source: Australian Taxation Office, Small Business Benchmarks, key ratios for the 2023-24 income year, published on data.gov.au under CC BY 2.5 AU. Reproduced unaltered. General information only, not tax advice - your circumstances decide what these figures mean for you.
Check your own numbers
Where do you sit?
Last financial year's figures are close enough. Nothing is sent anywhere - this runs in your browser and we never see it.
Knowing the number is the easy part.
The useful conversation is why yours sits where it does, and what to do about it. That is what Link Advisors does - and if the answer is that you are fine and need nothing, they will tell you that too.
Talk to Link Advisors →Questions people ask about this.
- What expense ratio does the ATO expect for glazing services?
- For turnover of $50,000 - $200,000, total expenses of 46% to 65% of turnover. For turnover of $200,001 - $600,000, total expenses of 62% to 76% of turnover. For turnover of more than $600,000, total expenses of 77% to 88% of turnover. These are the ATO's published small business benchmarks for the 2023-24 income year.
- What happens if my business sits outside the benchmark range?
- Nothing automatically. The benchmarks are one of the things the ATO uses to decide where to look, not a rule you have broken. Plenty of legitimate businesses sit outside their range for a season - a large equipment purchase, a bad year, a genuinely different operating model. What being outside it does mean is that you are more likely to be asked to explain, and the explanation is far easier to give with the records already in order.
- Are lower expenses always better?
- No, and this catches people out. Expenses well below the expected range can draw attention as readily as expenses above it, because they can suggest turnover recorded without the costs that normally come with it. The benchmarks describe what is usual, in both directions.
- How current are these figures?
- These are the ATO's key benchmark ratios for the 2023-24 income year, published as open data and updated annually. They are drawn from tax returns and activity statements of businesses in this industry.