If you’ve ever lodged online tax before, you know what the experience is like. It starts out easy and then, as they ask for more information and you forget what you put before, what you did this year, and the like, it gets harder. Not so hard that you can’t answer–but hard enough that some preparation would have helped a lot. So here are three easy steps to make sure you get from start to finish much faster this year.
- Sign up for several online tax agent services. For the most part, companies don’t charge you until after you’ve lodged your taxes (and the one that charge beforehand should be avoided anyways). Since it’s free to try–do! You don’t have to get too far in the forms or anything, just sign up and look at it for a few minutes. Does the interface make sense to you? Is it logical? Does the page load correctly? Use that testing to guide you on which service to use.
- Gather all your necessary information together beforehand. It’s amazing how many people start doing their online tax and forget to do this step. Having your notice of assessment, the information from last year’s return, and so on makes the process much, much easier. Rather than scrambling around the flat trying to get everything, you have it all in front of you. Bonus points if you organise it! The quicker you can get needed information, the faster you can be done with it all.
- Save your work. Some people learn this lesson the hard way–don’t be one of them. When you start lodging your online tax, start saving! One way to do this is to use an online tax programme that saves automatically, but backing up on this work is never a bad idea. If you can’t click a save button while lodging, try taking screen shots (or writing it out longhand). This may you have the key numbers saved if anything should go wrong.
These three easy steps won’t make your taxes less, but they should make you less stressed by the same. Don’t let lodging your online tax freak you out this year. Follow those steps, block out some time to do them, and then breathe. It’ll all be over soon.
Tags: Australian online tax, how to do online tax, lodge online tax, online tax
