Karl Sice, head of technology at Staples ANZ, told CRN that his company conducted a customer survey that showed almost 40 percent of small businesses were intending to take advantage of the $20,000 concession. "And almost three-quarters of those people said they intend to spend the $20k on technology."
That intent has translated to reality, he said, with Staples Australia seeing "a lot of momentum around the $20k tax break".
"We've been very busy and I've had a lot of late nights [in June]," he said. "There's definitely been year-on-year growth [in sales]… double-digit growth."
The best sellers for Staples has been cloud software such as Office 365 and Skype for Business. "We've sold lots of hardware too, but not so much for traditional PCs and laptops – more the newer form factors."
Sice expressed concern that the depreciation acceleration scheme is poorly understood by many small business owners. "We get questions like 'Can I use it for personal stuff?' and 'What sort of equipment is covered?'. There has to be some education around that, I think."
Staples uses Ingram Micro and Dicker Data and has not experienced any distribution delays in the frantic June period. Sice says that at distie, reseller and customer levels, companies are a lot more forward-planning than in eras gone-by: "Everyone's a lot more professional these days."
While good news for many resellers, it was a different story for IT suppliers that don't sell to the kinds of small customers eligible for the tax break.
"For us [business this June] has been about the same, as our client base isn't in the sub-$2 million category," said Jason Garland, director of Queensland provider Secure Access. "It hasn't affected our clients' buying habits. Maybe there's been a small benefit, but the [accelerated depreciation] hasn't a huge impact."
The accelerated depreciation initiative will run until June 2017.
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