2009 Tax Deadline – Beat the Deadline and Avoid Penalties

28 October, 2009

Saturday, October 31st is the official deadline for lodging your 2009 tax return. This is true whether you plan on lodging electronically, or if you decide to paper lodge. Although people using agents to lodge their returns may have a longer submission period; all individual 2009 returns lodged after the 31st of October may be subject to FTL (Failing to Lodge) penalties.

As of this time, the FTL penalties are calculated at the rate of one penalty unit every 28 days or part thereof that your return is overdue. Each penalty unit is currently valued at $110. The penalty unit value can be offset by a multiple of 2 or 5 depending on size tests for higher income taxpayers. This means that if you make more money and you do not lodge on time, your penalties may be either 2 or 5 times higher than that of others. For more details regarding FTL penalties, you can also refer to Chapter 98 of the ATO Receivables Policy.

The period of time that the return is overdue will be calculated from the day the return is due (The October 31st deadline in this case) to the day BEFORE the return is received. The amount will be increased until it has reached the maximum penalty allowable by law. The maximum penalty will be reached if the return is lodged more than 112 days after the lodgment deadline. This means that there can be four penalty units applied to any taxpayers.