Lodging your tax return for 2022

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Tax time is never easy, but it can be made a little bit more manageable by getting your tax return done as early as possible. Here are some tips on when you can lodge your tax return for the year 2022. 

When can you lodge your tax return for 2022?

The Australian tax return is due on October 31st of every year. Here are some things you’ll need to lodge your tax return: Your tax file number 

Your income statement from the previous year 

A completed Australian tax return form

Proof of your Australian residency (such as a driver’s licence, passport, or voter’s registration card) 

If you’re self-employed, you’ll also need: A business registration certificate or a copy of your business licence 

A completed Schedule C (Profit and Loss from Business) form If you’ve been overseas for more than six months during the year, you may need to provide documentary evidence that you were resident in a foreign country at any time during the year.

Checklist for lodging your tax return

For Australian taxpayers, preparing and lodging their tax returns can be a daunting task. However, by following a simple checklist, the process can be considerably eased. To lodge your tax return online, you will need to have the following: your tax file number (TFN), an Australian passport-sized photo, and your personal information (name, date of birth). If you are lodging your return via paper form, you will also need your TFN, an original or certified copy of your passport or travel document (if traveling outside of Australia during the year), and an original or certified copy of your visa if traveling on a tourist visa. Once you have these items ready, follow these simple steps to prepare and lodge your tax return:

Log in to the ATO online account where you have your tax file number (TFN) and personal details

The ATO will require you to enter your date of birth and submit your personal details, as well as an authentication code for your photo. After your details are submitted, you will need to upload documents for each of the categories listed below.

Include all the documents that you have which relate to your income from employment, pensions, superannuation, or investments (including shareholdings). If you have not lodged your income tax return in the past, you will need to submit a copy of your latest payslip.

What are the penalties for lodging a tax return late?

Taxpayers who fail to lodge their tax returns on time may face several penalties, including fines and/or imprisonment. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) warns that the maximum fine for a late tax return is five penalty units, or $1110. In some cases. Penalties can also apply to individuals who are responsible for the non-lodgement of another person’s tax return.

How can you lodge your tax return?

If you’re an Australian resident, you have the right to lodge your tax return online. You can also lodge your tax return through an accountant. There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing how to lodge your tax return. For example, if you’re self-employed, you’ll need to submit your invoices and other documents to support your claims. If you have a financial hardship, ask an accountant about available options.

Conclusion

In conclusion, tax returns for the 2021 tax year can be lodged from 1 July 2022. However, there are some benefits to lodging your return early, so it is advisable to start preparing your return as soon as possible. The best way to lodge your return is through your accountant, and the ATO has several helpful resources available to help you do this. If you need assistance, you can also call the ATO helpline.

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10 things you should consider before buying a property

Are you considering buying a property? Do you know you could miss opportunities to save thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars if you don’t plan well before the purchase?

Below are a few key considerations:

1. How should you set up your loan structure? If you don’t have a loan offset account for a rental property, after you make extra payments directly to the loan account, you can only claim interest deduction on the remaining balance of the loan. For tax purposes, this deductible balance can’t be changed even if you redraw the overpaid amount later. A good loan structure could also help you to stabilize interest rate and speed up loan repayment by combining a standard variable loan (with an offset account) and a fix rates account.

2. Timing of renovation. You might want to do a renovation right after you have bought the rental property. But do you know for any genuine repair & maintenance included in the renovation, you can claim an outright deduction against the rental income when the property is available for rental? If the work is done before the date when the property is available for rental, you can only claim the deduction against future capital gain when the property is sold. Depend on when you are going to sell, it could take years or up to decades before you can claim the deduction.

3. How should you split ownership? You might want to share the property ownership with a family member. For tax purposes, the percentage of ownership is based on the legal title, regardless of who is paying more on the mortgage. If the property will give you a tax profit, you might want to allocate more
ownership to the low-income earner to utilize the lower marginal tax rate. If it is giving you a tax loss, you might want to allocate more ownership to the high-income earner to utilize the loss. The goal is for the family to pay minimum tax together.

4. Should you use a family trust to purchase the property? There are many pros and cons related to a family trust. The advantages include tax savings on rental profit or capital gain, asset protection and succession planning on family wealth. However, family trust can’t distribute losses. All losses are trapped in the trust to be used to offset future trust profit. Therefore, you can’t utilize any rental loss in a trust to offset other income such as salary & wages. Family trusts also attract high accounting fees on initial setup and annual fees on financial statements and tax returns. State governments also charge much higher land tax on family trusts.

5. Will the income level change in future years for different owners? You might want to forecast the possible income for different owners to understand total tax payment / savings related to the property. This could also impact on your decision making on point 3 and 4 above.

6. Understand when you can treat your property as main residence to receive an exemption on capital gains tax. When eligible, even if you have received rental income, you could still treat your rental property as main residence and receive the exemption. To be eligible, you will need to treat it as your main residence at the beginning. Please check out this ATO link: Treating former home as main residence.

7. Decide whether you need to purchase a depreciation report. Most taxpayers don’t know that the depreciation on the building will need to be added back to calculate capital gains tax when the property is sold. When the property is held for more than 12 months, after applying the capital gains tax discount of 50%, it will effectively cut the tax rate by half at the time of sales. This makes depreciation deductions desirable for high income earners. However, for low-income earners it might not be ideal to claim depreciation as a rental deduction since they could be paying more on capital gains tax in the future. It could get more complicated if the property is under joint ownership between high and low income earners.

8. You might want to consider Centrelink payments for future or existing owners. Most Centrelink payments are income and asset tested. Before attaching a rental property to a family member who is receiving, or plan to receive government benefits, you might want to check the testing thresholds first to see if the Centrelink payment will be impacted. This is also applicable when you are making distributions from a family trust to different family members.

9. Have you considered using your SMSF (selfmanaged super fund) to make the purchase of a rental property? There are a lot of tax saving opportunities with a SMSF since the income tax rate is only 15%. And the capital gains tax rate is effectively only 10% after factoring in the 1/3 discount. The major downside with a SMSF is normally you can’t get the money out until you retire or on compassionate grounds (SMSF does have more flexibilities compared to normal retail super fund. But the choices are still very limited). It could be expensive to set up and operate a SMSF too. There are also strict legal requirements on the trustees. Penalties on incompliance could be severe. Tax law around SMSF is very complicated too. You will need to find a good tax accountant specialized in SMSF to help you to understand the structure, also do a cost-benefit analysis before setting it up.

10. Consider internal ownership changes. For your existing rental properties, you can also consider whether you should transfer the ownership between family members, or between different business structures (this is not applicable for SMSF). You might want to do this when the income level changes with family members, or rental property changes between tax profit and loss. Before the change, you need to consider the cost of transfer including capital gains tax, stamp duty, conveyancer fees, etc. Again, a cost-benefit analysis is a must before the change.

Last but not the least, did you combine all the above strategies and compare your choices? If you haven’t yet, how would you know that you have picked the best strategy to minimize your taxes? We can help you to factor in all considerations, compare different scenarios, also present you with a Property Prepurchase Report with all our findings to help you to make a decision. Contact us today to book in a consultation with an experienced tax accountant!

IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This is general advice only and does not consider your financial circumstances, needs and objectives. Before making any decision based on this document, you should assess your own circumstances or seek advice from your financial adviser and seek tax advice from your accountant.

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