Happy New Financial Year!

It’s tax time again! Below is some important information to consider when compiling your personal tax records this year.

Reminders

• You can see this month’s important dates on our website.
• You can also download and customise your own important dates calendar here.
• You can download our Individual ITR Checklist here.
• 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.
• Your Notice of Assessment (NOA) and all other ATO Correspondence will be sent through our new email system. For more information, please click here.

Tax Lodgement Due Dates:

• Most individuals will have a lodgement due date of 15 May 2023.
• Individuals who had a tax liability of $20,000 or more in 2021 will have a lodgement due date of 31 March 2023.
• If your 2021 tax return was not lodged by 30 June 2022, your 2022 return will have a due date of 31 October 2022.

We recommend that you wait until August to commence preparation of your tax return. This should allow for sufficient time for your bank interest, dividend income and employment income to be reported to the Tax Office, which will mean we shouldn’t need you to provide those details.

The ATO has also released industry specific tax deduction guides which you may find useful.

Covid-19 & Disaster Payments

If you received any of the following payments, you need to provide us will the details of the payments as they will not be prefilled by the ATO:

• Disaster Recovery Allowance
• Pandemic Leave Disaster Payments

For details on any payments you received, please login to your Services Australia account through MyGov.

ATO Key Focus Areas

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has indicated that they will be focusing on key areas this tax season.

Remember, the Three Golden Rules to tax deductions are:

1. You must have spent the money yourself and weren’t reimbursed.
2. If the expense is for a mix of income producing and private use, you can only claim the portion that relates to producing income.
3. You must have a record to prove it.

Work-related expenses

Deductions you can claim

• If your working from home expenses have increased, the ATO is expecting to see a corresponding reduction in car, clothing and other work related expenses.

Rental property income & deductions

Residential rental properties

• Make sure you include all of your income.
• The ATO receives and matches rental information from various sources. AirBnb have provided the ATO with data on around 190,000 hosts to crack down on unreported income.

Capital gains from crypto assets, property & shares

Crypto asset investments

• The ATO is receiving an increasing amount of information from various exchanges which dates back to 2014.

Travel deductions

Travel expenses

• The ATO has also updated their guidance on what you can and can’t claim when it comes to work related travel.

As always, do not hesitate to contact us.