TRANSCRIPT:
This is Dan. He represents taxpayers in Australia. Now Dan wants to lodge his 2020 tax return because it is after the 1st of July.
This is Michelle. Now Michelle represents bookkeepers/BAS agents, accountants/tax agents and business owners in Australia.
Dan is really eager to get his 2020 tax return lodged via the ATO. Dan needs to realise is that Michelle, who represents business owners, accountants and bookkeepers, has the following things on her list to do from the 1st of July being:
+ JobKeeper reporting
+ STP filing *very important*
+ June BAS
+ June super
+ 2020 year end
+ 2020 tax return
Now the priority for Michelle at the very start of July will be JobKeeper reporting because that is due on the 14th, as well as STP filing which is due on either the 14th or the 31st of July depending on how big the business is.
What happens is you have Dan wanting to lodge his 2020 tax return and this means that Michelle, who is representative of three different groups, needs STP filing to be done. Now until that is done and remembering that she has a little bit of time to get it done and understanding that there’s lots of clients businesses etcetera that she has to get through.
Dan will potentially have to wait for this to happen, because STP filing gets reported to the ATO by the due date and then Dan can get his tax return lodged and it should be all done. Now this is just an example based on STP filing. There are other situations that we have to wait for other reporting to get through to the ATO. But in the case that Dan lodges his tax return prior to STP filing being completed, there’s a risk that this tax return is completely wrong.
What we saw happen on the 1st of July…Michelle’s plugging away, getting a whole lot of stuff done, trying to lodge to the ATO and what happened is the ATO portal crashes! Due to an overload of the system and the traffic sometimes you run into some problems *yay*.
So the moral of this story is…dear taxpayers please be patient with us because the start of the financial year is pretty crazy. Sometimes systems crash and we want you to lodge your tax return right the first time and not have to make any changes or get the wrong refund or tax payable because we are still finalising things at our end.
In theory, your MyGov should be able to confirm or let you know when your STP filing has been lodged by the appropriate person, so then you can start looking at preparing your 2020 tax return. If you’re unsure, the best thing to do is ask the right person in your business (where you work at) if it’s been done. If not, just wait. Just wait until the end of the month. Wait until August because you don’t want to get that tax return wrong. And when things go wrong, like a total portal meltdown…there is wine!
