We thought we would write to you to get your tax returns sorted faster and more efficiently this year. Please keep in mind the following tips when sending the information to us:
- The tax forms for 2022 will not be available and approved by the ATO until 1st July.
- The ATO will not start processing until 5 working days after the beginning of the year, once all their systems are working well.
- Please keep in mind, the ATO prefill (which is the information supplied to them by your employer, banks, crypto houses, private health funds, cash management trusts and other reporting authorities), will not be complete until late July or later. It is normally downloaded from the ATO portal or your MyGov straight to our program.
If we hurry to prepare the return early, we have to manually input the information. This is time consuming, costly to you and it is likely to be incorrect if the reporting authority has made adjustments to your accounts, or something was missed.
4. Remember the areas of concern for the ATO which we reported in our previous email. If you missed it, it is on our website. It is mainly: no dockets, no claims.
Now to YOUR homework:
5. Make sure your information is complete:
- Include contracts for the purchase of new assets
- Interest and insurance for rental properties
- The number of weeks rented this year
- % of business use for work related expenses
- Total number of hours worked from home (WFH)
- The acknowledgment from your super fund for your private super contributions.
- Changes to personal details such as: bank accounts, addresses or telephone numbers.
6. Please make sure that your information is organized. We are digital which means we would prefer scanned copies of your receipts and documents. If you have no access to a scanner, then please
- file them in a lever arch file,
- sort them chronologically: July 2021 to June 2022
- and per expense type such as: materials, tools, motor vehicle expenses, etc.
- we accept summaries in excel as well.
- All those paper records will be scanned by us and returned to if you drop them with us after completing of your return.
7. We are on the “cloud” which is more efficient as there are no physical data files, no paper, and it is faster to export to a printable format. Thus, you will get an email from our tax software: Xero. We ask that you check your Junk emails when we notify you that we completed your return, just in case your firewall has sent it there. You will be asked to sign digitally and we will get a notification that your return was signed and it is ready to file.
If you do not wish to sign digitally, please let us know at the time of submission of your documents.
8. This year we require your signature in our Engagement Letter and you will receive a “proposal” from us (a program called Ignition) which specifies the scope of our services and an estimate of our fees. Please sign and return it to us and we will then commence preparation of your return.
Lastly, we ask for your patience in our busy times.
Feel free to email or talk to us about any concerns you may have regarding the above. We are here to help you and you will be making the process smoother for us.
We thank you for your collaboration and look forward to another year of service to each one of you.