The Australian Taxation Office has a stated goal of processing 94% of electronically submitted returns within 14 days of receipt. While it has issued one billion dollars in total refunds for the 2010-2011 , it might still have trouble reaching that goal.
When we last checked the figures on Monday, the average refund for 2010-2011 returns was above $3000. In its latest update, the ATO says it has received almost 1.3 million returns (with almost half of those through e-tax), has finalised 460,000, and has issued 419,000 of them. The total value of refunds issues is $1.03 billion, which gives an average refund of around $2458.
The bigger challenge for the ATO is that on these figures, it has only processed just over a third of the returns submitted. While a large chunk of those (739,000) came in over the last week and thus haven’t hit the 14-day limit, the ATO will need to work hard to get those knocked over and meet its 94% goal.
With that said, it anticipates an additional half a billion dollars in refunds over the next two days. However, as that figure includes both 2010-2011 and older returns, that in itself doesn’t guarantee the targets will be met. We’ll keep you posted as new data comes to hand.
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