Happy New Financial Year!

We're excited to be celebrating 5 years of SaabTeece! Whilst we have over 60 years of history, this year marks 5 years since the merge of Saab & Teece. Please click here to read George & Andy’s reflections on the last 5 years.

Providing Your Tax Records

You can download our Individual Income Tax Return Checklist here.

Don’t forget that you can upload your tax records to our secure Client Portal. For more information, please click here. If you don’t yet have access, please contact us.

2023 Tax Lodgement Due Dates:

• Most individuals will have a lodgement due date of 15 May 2024.
• Individuals who had a tax liability of $20,000 or more in 2022 will have a lodgement due date of 31 March 2024.
• If your 2022 tax return was not lodged by 30 June 2023, your 2023 return will have a due date of 31 October 2023.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) recommends that you wait until August to commence preparation of your tax return. This should allow for sufficient time for your bank interest, dividend income, Private Health Insurance details and employment income to be reported to the Tax Office, which will mean we shouldn’t need you to provide those details.

Changes in your 2023 Tax Return

Low-and-Middle-Income Earner Tax Offset (LIMITO)

LIMITO will not be available in your 2023 tax return. LIMITO was introduced for a limited time to provide tax relief to low-and-middle-income earners. You may find, that if your taxable income was below $66,667 in 2022 (and you have similar income in 2023), your tax refund in 2023 will be $1,000 less.

Working from Home Calculations

The fixed rate method has increased to 67 cents per hour from 1 July 2022.

The record keeping requirements by the tax office to substantiate working from home deduction claims changed on 1 March 2023.

For more information, please visit our website.

Motor Vehicle Deductions

The cents per kilometre rate has increased to 78 cents per work kilometre travelled from 1 July 2022.

ATO Focus Areas

The 2023 federal budget allocated $89.6M to the ATO over two years to increase personal tax compliance.

Key focus areas in the ATO’s sights are:

Work-related expenses

Please ensure you do not take a copy and paste approach (from one year to the next) with your work-related expenses. Please ensure you review the expenses you have incurred and ensure you have sufficient records to substantiate your claims.

You can access the ATO’s Fact Sheets on Common Deductions and Record Keeping information here.

Is your side hustle a business?

There are a couple of key considerations when determining if your side hustle is a business:

Is it a repeated activity – are you regularly engaging?

Is your intention to make a profit?

If you answer yes to both questions, it’s likely the ATO would consider your side hustle a business, requiring you to have an ABN and report associated income and expenses in your tax return.

Holiday homes and rental properties

The ATO is paying close attention to holiday homes and rental properties. For holiday homes – it is important that all income is reported and that expenses are apportioned between personal and deductible. You cannot claim a deduction for your holiday home during a period it was not available to the public.

With regards to interest deductions against rental properties, it is important to remember that any redraw or refinance on a loan for purposes unrelated to the property will potentially deem that portion of loan interest not deductible.

ATO’s increasing Data Matching

Rental Property Data

In addition to bank loan data, the ATO will acquire landlord insurance data from insurers for 2022 to 2026. They will match properties to ATO records for the treatment of rental income, expenses and capital gains risk. This data will include payouts made by insurers that must be reported as income by the taxpayer.

Income Protection Insurance

The ATO will also acquire Income Protection Insurance policy data and match this data with policy payouts and deduction claims.

As always, do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

SaabTeece