Personalise your myTax return
You can personalise your myTax return – this:
- allows you to decide which sections you need to complete
- saves you having to answer questions that aren’t relevant to you.
We pre-fill your myTax return
We'll automatically pre-fill your return with all the available information reported to us by organisations, such as banks, employers, government agencies and private health insurers. Most of the information is available by early August.
After that, all you have to do is:
- review the pre-filled information, and
- enter any other missing details to complete your tax return.
Remember, you must make sure all the information on your return is correct before you lodge it, including all the pre-filled information.
If you think any pre-filled information is wrong, contact the relevant organisation to check the information before you make any change.
Why you should wait until early August to lodge using myTax
Historically, most information is reported to us and available for pre-filling by early August. All of your information may be available before this, but sometimes it takes a little longer.
For example, you may find that:
- some of your payment summaries have been pre-filled, but not all of them, or
- interest from one financial institution has been pre-filled but interest from another one hasn’t been.
You can complete myTax from 1 July 2015 if you prefer not to wait for all your information to be pre-filled, but you will need all your records and statements to enter all your information yourself to complete and lodge your return.
What data can we pre-fill?
We will automatically pre-fill for you all the information provided to us at the time you do your myTax return, including:
- most Australian Government allowances, pensions and payments
- salary, wages and other amounts that are shown on payment summaries by employers
- Australian superannuation income streams, annuity payments and lump sums
- interest from financial institutions
- public company dividends
- managed fund distributions
- private health insurance policy details.
What if all your data doesn't pre-fill?
There are a few reasons why all your data might not pre-fill.
We haven't received the information yet
We receive information from third-party providers from 1 July, with most information available by early August. Most information is ready to pre-fill within a couple of days of us receiving it.
We could not match the information to your record
This can happen when information sent to us by third-party providers, such as name, date of birth, address and tax file number (TFN), does not match our records.
The information did not pass all processing checks
There may be some errors in the information sent to us by the third-party provider, for example, there may be alphabetical characters in a 'dollars and cents' field.
What if you don't agree with the pre-filled information?
You can change or delete pre-filled information if you have more current information in your statements or records.
If you don't understand or agree with the pre-filled information, you should:
- check the pre-filled information against your own records or statements, and
- clarify the discrepancy with the third-party provider – they may need to send amended information to us.
Avoid an audit – resolve discrepancies before you lodge
If you amend the pre-filled information on your return, it is important to resolve any discrepancies with the third-party provider before you lodge. This is because we routinely do information matching to identify discrepancies between the information in a lodged tax return and the information provided to us by the third-party providers.