An Australian financial year starts on July 1st, and, luckily, ends on June 30th (of the following year). I am wondering both how and why this came about.
My guess is that it is related to the fact that Senate terms start/end at the same time (and Senate terms are mandated by the constitution).
Are you sure that the AUS Fiscal year is also determined by law or is it simply custom?
Is it custom for many companies or just a few?
Wikipedia says
which leaves unclear what determines “most” companies who are required to follow - is it size of company measured by income? By employees?
I had in mind the tax laws and the Government budget, when I said financial year. I thought that “financial year” in other contexts was (in some sense) informal, and determined by the organisation involved, and that it did differ in some cases. For example, I thought some Universities go by the calendar year. But I am not sure about this.
Regardless, let me clarify my question; I meant the sense of “financial year” that refers to the Australian Federal Government’s financial year.
Well, in the UK fiscal year starts on April 1st* / 6th (depending on definition) and there is a historical reason for it. It’s basically the Julian new year’s day (25th March) + 11 days when the calendar switched to Gregorian. I think.
I would speculate that Australia’s fiscal year would have been modelled on britain’s and then shifted for local reasons (as opposed to, say, starting out as 1 Jan to 31 Dec)
In Ireland they (sensibly IMO) changed the tax year from April 1 to January 1. Much tidier. The downside is that accountancy staff are severely overworked in the days leading up to Christmas.