TABLE OF CONTENTS


Your employer

Your employer has until either 

  • the 14th July (if the business > 19 employees), 
  • or 31st July 2020 (if the business has ≤ 19 employees)

to lodge their employee's (your) Income Statement summary to the ATO. You will see on your mygov whether your employer has FINALISED their submissions. You will have to communicate with them whether they've done their bit and not make additional changes to your Income for the financial year.


Further, large companies that do employee share schemes (e.g. ANZ, BHP, BlueScope, etc) will normally finalise these records around end of July. 


Your family

Your parents, children, or relatives may include you in their business, family trust, self-managed superfunds, or family-owned company affairs. You should check with them if they have involved you in any way before you lodge. Often young people will try to lodge their tax return themselves but are unaware that their parents bought them shares, or have a large term deposit in your name, or the young person forgets that they were involved in their family's business structures such as trust distributions, family-company dividends etc. 


Your Private health insurance

If you paid for Private Health Insurance, these need to be declared in your tax return. These institutions normally take to the end of July to complete their submissions.

Your bank & shareholdings (dividends)

Your banks need time to submit all your interest income from your savings and term deposits to the ATO. Normally they get this done by mid-July.


In addition, companies listed on the ASX need time to submit all their shareholder's dividend income to the ATO.


Your superannuation fund - claiming personal contribution deduction or income streams

If you claimed a personal super contribution deduction OR receive income streams from your superfund, ensure they've reported all the necessary information to the ATO otherwise you may lose out on a hefty tax refund from all the tax they withheld from you.


Centrelink & Government grants

Centrelink normally have their information on you finalised by 7th July.


Your deductions

If you lodge too early, you might forget some deductions that you could have claimed had you given yourself additional time to recall and go through your expenses more thoroughly.


The need to consult an accountant

Some people think its better to just lodge their tax return without the need of an accountant. This is true if you earn below $20k. 

However, once you earn above this, you want to try get back every single dollar of tax withheld from your employer and from the ATO. This is especially true during important Government tax announcements such as the Low Medium income tax offset of 2019, and the COVID19 tax concessions of 2020.

With an accountant, we can help you maximise your tax refund or reduce your tax liability, be compliant as per the ATO, advise you on ways on how to maximise your wealth and financials affairs, and more.