ATO systems and digital services
Overall, our system health is tracking well, and activities are processing as anticipated. The waiting room for Online services for individuals has not been required in the past few weeks.
There was some slight degradation to the Australian Business Register (ABR) on Thursday 15 August 2024, which was quickly remediated.
Tax return processing and phone services
The high demand in our call environment has steadied, with call volumes on the registered agent phone line down by 9% from last year.
Approximately 5.8 million individual 2024 tax returns have been lodged since 1 July 2024, which is an increase of around 1% compared with the same time last year. Of these:
- Self-prepared – 3.2 million, around a 4% increase compared with the same time last year.
- Agent prepared – 2.4 million, around a 1% decrease compared with the same time last year.
Note: The figures above are rounded, at a point in time and subject to change.
Refunds are processing as expected. The overall volume of refunds has decreased, and the value of the average refund has increased compared with the same time last year.
Marketing and Communication
Our current communications focus is on promoting tax time tips for sole traders, emphasising the importance of:
- correctly reporting business income and expenses
- calculating business losses
- how and when to apply non-commercial loss rules to offset the loss against other income
- reporting personal services income (PSI).
Other communications include:
- Promotion of a range of support tools such as the small business tax time toolkit, the ATO app and the myDeductions tool within the app, as well as the online learning resource Essentials to strengthen your small business.
- Promoting the differences between share investing and share trading, and how it can make a difference to a client’s tax situation.
- Highlighting that if employers missed the most recent 29 July due date for quarterly SG contributions, they need to get their super obligations back on track by lodging a Super Guarantee Charge (SGC) statement and paying the SGC to the ATO by 28 August.
- Clarification that the change to indexation rates for study or training support loans is not yet law – if your clients have study loans, don’t wait for the law to change, lodge their tax returns as normal.
- Promotion of Scams Awareness Week, which is an annual reminder to check how ‘scam aware’ your business is. This year’s theme is ‘Share a story, stop a scam’.
- The Tax Professionals newsletter will cover topics including steps to support you and your clients with the NFP self-review return, a call out to join the Property and Construction Stakeholder Relationship forum, advice on correctly calculating CGT, changes to the way the myGovID screen looks, R&D tax incentive reporting starts in September, how to view and print a Notice of Assessment and record keeping tips for clients investing in crypto assets.
Reminders were issued about the importance of agents including their clients’ preferred financial institution details (FID) on all lodgments. Whilst not a mandatory field when lodging through practice management software, failure to include FID results in any existing details on the client account being end-dated. This could result in future payments issuing via cheque.
This was the final meeting for the TPSG tax time 2024 meeting series. Thank you to TPSG members for your time and valued contributions.
Useful links
- Tax Time 2024
- Overview of the key changes
- Support for your practice
- The Tax practitioner assistance (TPA) service
- TPSG tax time updates
- Tax time lodgment statistics