3 ms·

Australian here (we speak English and have kangaroos, not in the towns to be clear but they do outnumber the people). Australian personal tax returns are gettin

Australian here (we speak English and have kangaroos, not in the towns to be clear but they do outnumber the people). Australian personal tax returns are getting easier and easier with the move to electronic filing combined with pre-filling of income from employers and financial institutions. Log onto MyGov, check the pre-filled information which is about 90% of what you need then figure out the remaining special cases such as charitable donations, work related expenses and you are done. Accountants and tax filing firms are nervous and a bit worried but not showing that publicly or apparently lobbying.

Aramgutang 8y ago
As another Australian, can confirm. This year's tax return was as easy as logging into MyGov, verifying my contact details, confirming that the wage payments report from my employer was accurate, entering a previously-calculated number into the "capital gains" field, and pressing "submit". Took less than 10 minutes. The only non-trivial bits are things like capital gains, work expenses, donations, but these are all things that you should be tracking in a spreadsheet as they occur through the year, and you'll have a number at the bottom of that spreadsheet that you can just copy over to your return (like I did with my capital gains, for example). Even as a contractor in the past (keep in mind, in Australia, a contractor is a sole proprietor business), filing my return was as easy as copying income/expense totals from my invoice/receipt tracking spreadsheets into the return, adding any new depreciating assets to the list (that persists on their servers and gets recalculated each year) and submitting. I don't have any interest accounts or private health insurance, but these would be some of the other things that get automatically pre-filled. And it's been this way for well over a decade now.

Aramgutang 8y ago

As another Australian, can confirm. This year's tax return was as easy as logging into MyGov, verifying my contact details, confirming that the wage payments report from my employer was accurate, entering a previously-calculated number into the "capital gains" field, and pressing "submit". Took less than 10 minutes. The only non-trivial bits are things like capital gains, work expenses, donations, but these are all things that you should be tracking in a spreadsheet as they occur through the year, and you'll have a number at the bottom of that spreadsheet that you can just copy over to your return (like I did with my capital gains, for example). Even as a contractor in the past (keep in mind, in Australia, a contractor is a sole proprietor business), filing my return was as easy as copying income/expense totals from my invoice/receipt tracking spreadsheets into the return, adding any new depreciating assets to the list (that persists on their servers and gets recalculated each year) and submitting. I don't have any interest accounts or private health insurance, but these would be some of the other things that get automatically pre-filled. And it's been this way for well over a decade now.