A number of changes to business tax filing and accounting rules have been announced in a joint Budget statement from Finance Minister Michael Cullen and Revenue Minister Peter Dunne.
“Compliance costs will be reduced by raising a number of tax thresholds,” they say. “That may mean fewer tax returns for businesses to complete, a reduction in [...]

Victorian businesses will save more than $1 billion in payroll tax, land tax and workers compensation premiums under the Victorian budget handed down by Treasurer John Lenders yesterday.
Payroll taxes, which had been scheduled to fall from 5.05% to 5%, have been slashed to 4.95%. The thresholds on land taxes have been increased by 10%, with [...]

Fosters Group and Lion Nathan made their announcements within hours of each other, citing hardening consumer and regulatory sentiment.
Alcopops with energy additives are popular with clubbers and younger drinkers because the stimulants offset the drowsiness associated with heavy drinking. Sales of the drinks have soared to be worth nearly $700 million a year.
Fosters said it [...]

For the first time, scientists have shown that it is more difficult for women to replace muscle that is lost naturally as they get older — because of key differences in the way their bodies react to food.
Experts at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, USA and The University of Nottingham, UK [...]

The study, undertaken jointly by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Fallon Clinic, and Fallon Community Health Plan, is the first to observe a statistically significant hormetic effect of low-level radon exposure. Toxins and other environmental stressors (including radiation) that have a beneficial effect at very low doses are said to exhibit hormesis (scientists believe [...]

We wanted an expedition, a taste of wilderness, a journey to somewhere remote. But without the budget of real Arctic explorers, my two friends and I came up with an alternative - a pilgrimage to Britain’s northernmost hotel. So, in the middle of last month, we set off for Unst, the furthest-flung inhabited island in [...]

In researching the problem, bioengineer Kristy Arbogast talked to automakers about devising restraints that would be safer for small, immature bodies.
“The response I’d get back was, ‘We don’t have the tools we need to design better child seat belts,’ ” said Arbogast, a traffic-injury researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
What they needed was a smarter [...]