We’re quickly approaching the end of the current financial year and that means another round of “oh god, I have to do my tax returns now, such a pain in the ass.”
Now this isn’t a big issue for accountants (since they know how to do this) or those fancy people who hire accountants but for those who have to do everything themselves, this can be a time-consuming task that’s rife with “what the hell am I even doing?” moments.
But luckily for most non-accountant people, lodging your tax return is a hell of a lot easier thanks to a small but super-helpful change to how you receive your end of financial year summary info.
Thanks to a new employer tax reporting system called Single Touch Payroll (STP) that was introduced this financial year, your end-of-year summary info (which is now called an income statement) will now be filed away on your MyGov account, meaning there’s no need to wait for several weeks or months for your employer to send those deets in the form of a group certificate to you since they can now do it all online.
Your year-to-date tax and super info will be kept up to date on your MyGov every time you get paid, which makes record-keeping far easier than the shelves of paper that you currently have.
So in short, everything you need to lodge your tax return is now in one convenient spot on your MyGov account, you now have an online record of your year-to-date tax and super deets, and you no longer have to wait forever for your employer to finalise group certificates before you lodge your tax returns.
Huzzah!
Heads up though because this new change may not be available for everyone as not all employers are reporting through STP, meaning you’ll still be stuck with the stress of waiting for a payment summary to be sent to you. You also technically don’t need a MyGov account to have all this info but you won’t be able to see anything until you get one so those who don’t have an account should quickly sign up. It doesn’t take long and will make life so much easier.
As for those with accountants, they’ll know exactly what’s going on already so no need to worry about anything. Besides, you’re paying them to worry about this stuff for you anyway.
Happy tax return lodging, everyone, and may the odds be ever in your favour. Or you could just leave it again until next year and let future you worry about it.