Jacob Fenech

Yeah, I agree that this is a really common question that we also see.

So if it's just that you're – if you haven't had – and there's a couple of takes to this, so bear with me.

The first is if you've had any tax paid during the year, so whether it be, say, withholdings or you've had –

franking credits or whatever it might be, even if your income's under the $18,200 in total for the year, you should still lodge a tax return.

The reason being is that you can usually get a lot of that tax back.

You're leaving cash on the table with the ATO if you haven't lodged your return and you've paid any sort of tax, even

say another common one is you haven't provided your tfn tax file number to the bank they'll withhold automatically on any interest i know interest rates are pretty low but um at 47 so you can get that tax back if you lodge a tax return um so i would i would caveat that yes if it's if you've had no tax withheld and you're under that bracket you don't need to um to actually lodge a tax return but then the other thing that you do need to do

is either via myGov or a tax agent is actually, the technical term is non-lodgement advice.

So it's basically just, hey, ATO, I'm either under the threshold or for whatever reason, I didn't need to lodge a return this year.

Note that or update your system with that, please.

Otherwise, if you don't do that, you'll log into your myGov or you'll go see your tax agent and you'll say, all right, you've got four years of tax returns outstanding.

And you've actually got messages in your MyGov, for instance, from the ATO chasing you on all of these.

So it's just an annoying thing to find out after the fact.

So just jump in, like I said, whether it's on MyGov or with your accountant and actually just click through to say that you don't need to lodge a tax return for that year.

And the first piece is don't freak out like a lot of people do.

So I think, number one, you can always amend.

Usually rule of thumb is if you claimed it ages ago, so we're talking years ago, more than two years really as a general rule, then you probably –

don't necessarily need to go back and amend.

I mean, it's usually the review period that the ATO uses is two years.

If it was a big deduction and you are nervous about it, then I think definitely speak to a tax agent because they can kind of help you note whether or not you should actually go back and still amend.