Earlier in the month, the ATO issued a warning, telling people to keep appropriate receipts and other documentation, particularly for what they call "other work-related expenses". And that warning is accompanied by ATO staff being directed to undertake random audits to make sure people are following the rules when it comes to work-related expenses. So, what can you do to ensure you aren't hit with any fines of extra payments to the ATO?
The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has confirmed it is conducting random audits of taxpayers in a bid to ferret out spurious work expenses. The random audits began 18 months ago and are ongoing. Here's what you need to know.
If you engaged in a little "creative licence" while lodging your tax return last year, it's time to start worrying: the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is still sifting through everyone's work-related expenses for 2017 and it reckons a lot of them smell fishy. A whopping $7.9 billion was claimed by Australian taxpayers for "other work-related expenses" last year.
Consequently, Australians are now officially "on notice" to have their receipts ready for inspection.
Missed the deadline to lodge your tax return? You’re not alone: heaps of Australians forget every year to file by the October 31 deadline.
Whether you’re behind by just one year or several, don’t panic. There are things you can do to stay on the ATO’s good side: but don’t dawdle. The longer you wait, the higher penalty you can pay – and those can reach in the hundreds of dollars.
If you plan to lodge your tax return yourself, you need to be aware that the deadline for lodging your return is only two weeks away. The latest date for self-lodgers to get their tax returns in to the ATO is 31 October 2017.
If you lodge after that date, you run the risk of incurring a late lodgment penalty of up to $1050. Here's what you need to know.
Tax refund season is well underway, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, you will have received a sizeable tax refund that you can put towards whatever takes your fancy. If you’re not so lucky, you may be wondering why you ended up with a much smaller amount than usual. Or worse – owe the ATO money. Here are five possible reasons your tax refund was lower than you were hoping for.
How well do you know Australia's tax rules when it comes to work-related expenses? If you claim a deduction this year, are you sure it's going to be legit? Test your tax knowledge with this multiple-choice quiz from the Australian Tax Office (ATO).
Unless you're dead, unemployed, or a moustache-twirling Monopoly Man, you're probably paying more tax than you'd like. If you're wondering where all that withheld money goes, you need to check out this interactive infographic - it breaks down how the government intends to spend $463.3 billion tax dollars in granular detail.
Many people are required to travel as part of their job. Work-related travel might be something as simple as a short trip to see a client for an hour or two or a prolonged trip lasting several days interstate or even overseas. Some of these travel expenses can be claimed at tax time - but you need to know which rules to follow.
Planning to lodge your tax return yourself this year? Be careful as the ATO will be watching more closely than ever in 2017. Here's what you need to know.
Every financial year, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) puts the spotlight on certain work expenses that people attempt to claim erroneously. Whether through genuine error or deliberate subterfuge, these dodgy deductions add up to millions of dollars in lost government spending - and they can land you in hot water with the tax man. Here are 11 claims that the ATO plans to target this year, straight from the horse's mouth.
Want to know what each profession makes? What about the highest and lowest earning postcodes? Or what incomes are like between genders? The ATO has released a massive trove of salary information this week, so consider the floodgates of data open!
At time of writing the ATO website is down.
The site states there is an "Unknown error".
There is a strong chance that the ridesharing service Uber will be forced to charge higher fares in Australia following a Federal Court ruling that it must pay GST. Moving forward, Uber drivers will be charged GST like other taxi services, a cost that is almost certain to be passed on to the customer.
Looks like the Australian Taxation Office's systems are down again.
Whoops-a-daisy.
Many Australian Tax Office (ATO) IT systems have been unavailable for days after a major fault, apparently caused by a problem with a large-scale storage server. The ATO’s online systems, including its public website and portals for taxation agents, were down for several days. At the time of writing, the ATO reports that most services are now operational but may experience slowdowns. It's been a few days since the outage happened. Here's what we know so far.
The Australian Tax Office (ATO) website went down for two days due to a storage hardware failure. The hardware was provided by HP Enterprise (HPE) and the fault affected backup systems as well. The ATO is now trying to recover one petabyte of data.
Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: ATO spies on Facebook, Walking Dead secrets revealed, what 15 corporate buzzwords really mean.
Small businesses across Australia have been mandated to sign up for SuperStream, an electronic reporting standard for superannuation payments to employees. The objective of SuperStream, which is managed by the Australian Tax Office (ATO), is to streamline the superannuation contributions payment and tracking process. The deadline for small businesses to be on-board with SuperStream is looming.
Tax time is a fun time of year as most of us lodge our returns and then wait patiently for our tax refunds to arrive from the ATO. But preparing and lodging a tax return can be intimidating for some; particularly younger taxpayers who are less familiar with the process. Here are six common tax mistakes that younger people often make -- and how to avoid them.
