If you are running late at lodging your tax returns, you need to be answerable to the ATO or Australian Taxation Office. In general, you need to lodge a tax return every year. However, due to certain unfortunate situations, you can fail to carry out the procedure. Under such unavoidable circumstances, late lodging of your tax return does not get much serious, but you need to take care of your overdue tax return if you do not want to make the entire process hard for yourself.
If you do not lodge your late tax return, the ATO can take legal actions by applying several penalties and sanctions with an approach to penalize you for lodging late or in order to force you to lodge. Whatever the current scenario is, it is always the best option to seek professional help. Keep reading the article to gain more insights about overdue tax return lodge.
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Learn Whether You Need to Lodge a Late Tax Return or Not?
If you do not lodge a tax return right on time, you must lodge a late tax return. The majority of the Aussies need to lodge tax returns every year. However, some people find the process tedious and complex while carrying out the procedure of lodging tax returns. In order to carry out the process with utmost efficiency, you must consider hiring tax accountants to ensure a seamless process.
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How to Lodge Your Late Tax Return?
Filing a late tax return becomes more substantial when you have an adequate amount of receipt and statements. The ATO gathers various information from government agencies, banks and employers. If you seek professional help, the experts will assist in checking your lodgement status with an approach to check the due year of the tax payment.
They will even retrieve the important details that have been reported to the ATO. If the provided data gets matched with your Tax File Number, you will have the opportunity to take your next step. If you are willing to ensure the late tax return lodgement in the best possible ways, consider hiring tax agents in Perth to make your tax lodging journey a cakewalk.
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Can You Extend Late Tax Return Lodgement?
There are quite a few scenarios that can allow you to obtain an extension and allow you to lodge your overdue tax. For example, if you were not able to lodge due to some of your personal or geographical boundaries, you can be blessed with an extension.
Some of the appropriate examples include natural disasters and widespread system disruption. Professional experts with years of expertise in this field will help you in all the steps until you attain a deferral date. They can help you to get a deferral in the following ways that are mentioned below:
- You can consider lodging for a deferral request in the online mode, and your tax agents will guide you.
- You can also choose to complete the present online application with the help and guidance of a registered tax professional of the particular firm.
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What Happens if You Do Not Lodge Your Tax Returns?
If you fail to lodge your tax returns, the ATO will look at the first issue of a Failure to Lodge (FTL) penalty. The value of the penalty unit is approximately $222 for a 28 day period, which makes the maximum charge to be $1110- for five penalty units. Apart from the charges, the ATO has the right to issue you an assessment warning letter containing an estimation of your income for the missing days and year.
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Can You Reduce Your Penalties?
The answer is yes. Under special scenarios, the ATO might consider remitting or reducing your penalties. The specific circumstances include:
- You are facing some significant domestic or personal difficulties that are beyond your control.
- Instead of owing tax, you have a refund available from the tax return
- suffered from a natural disaster
- You are dealing with a major illness or taking care of another person who is seriously sick.
- You were not present in your area at that moment.
These kinds of appropriate situations are considered to be reasonable and fair.
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How Can a Registered Tax Agent Assist You in Overdue Tax Return Filing?
While lodging a late tax return, the tax professionals can provide you with expert guidance in several ways. You can expect some of the benefits from the tax agents such as:
- Family payment
- Academic tax refund
- Baby bonus
- Superannuation co-contribution
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Can You Submit a Late Return?
If you are wondering whether you can submit a late return or not, then the answer is yes. Submission of late returns can be made, but you need proper guidance in order to ensure a smooth and hassle-free process. With the help of tax accountants or tax agents, you can prepare your tax returns and ATO statements. This will help you to pave the way for yourself to tax lodging in an easy way. These professionals will pledge to find out insights related to deductions that you can get. You need to provide your receipts, bank details and several other documents that deal with your financial data.
Of course, they are well-trained experts, and they will not take a look at your financial information without your consent. They can potentially lodge all the previous year tax returns as well, ranging from 2 years to 10 years. Besides that, seeking professional assistance can lead to late lodgement. They have the confidence to represent you in front of the ATO and raise the topic of extension. Getting in touch with these skilled experts can be a boon for you since they can update all your tax matters within ATO guidelines, thus saving you quite a buck in penalties.
The Bottom Line
The lodgement of late tax returns becomes super easy when you hire a tax agent in Perth. If you abide by the right guidance of these taxation experts, even a complex process will look easy. Overdue tax returns can end up imposing extreme pressure on you, and you can choose to de-stress yourself by hiring professional tax agents.
