How to Lodge Your Tax Return in Australia: myTax Guide & Deadlines

The short version: you lodge your 2025-26 tax return online through myTax, inside your myGov account linked to the ATO. Sign in, check every income statement shows as “tax ready”, confirm the pre-filled figures, add anything missing, claim your deductions, review the estimate and lodge. Most take 30 to 60 minutes. The self-lodger deadline is 31 October 2026 — but it falls on a Saturday this year, so you effectively have until 11:59pm Monday 2 November 2026. Miss it and the ATO can fine you up to $1,820.

The deadline, stated plainly

Lodging your own 2025-26 return — via myTax, the ATO app, or paper — is due 31 October 2026. Because that’s a Saturday, the ATO’s next-business-day rule pushes the effective deadline to Monday 2 November 2026, 11:59pm local time (confirmed in an ATO reminder on 19 October 2026). Note both dates:

• Lodgement: Monday 2 November 2026 (self-lodgers).
• Payment: owe tax and it’s due 21 November 2026 — also a Saturday, so effectively Monday 23 November 2026. Lodging on time doesn’t buy extra time to pay.

Late lodgement can attract one penalty unit per 28-day period (or part), capped at five. The penalty unit rose to $364 on 1 July 2026, so a month late costs $364 and a seriously late return up to $1,820. Owe tax as well and the general interest charge runs from the day after the due date — around 11.51% per year, compounding daily — and since 1 July 2025 it’s no longer tax-deductible.

Do you actually need to lodge?

Not everyone. Roughly: an Australian resident whose only income was wages under $18,200, with no tax withheld, generally doesn’t need to. You do need to lodge if any of these apply:

• tax was withheld from your pay (lodge to get it back — refunds don’t arrive by themselves);
• you had a HELP, HECS, TSL or other study debt;
• you earned interest, dividends, rental income, or sold shares, crypto or property;
• you freelanced, ran a side business, or earned foreign income;
• the ATO asked you for a return.

Don’t need to lodge? Submit a non-lodgment advice through your myGov ATO services — two minutes, and it stops the ATO chasing you.

Before you touch myTax: five things to have ready

1. myGov linked to the ATO

myTax lives inside ATO online services: sign in to myGov, choose ATO from your linked services, then Manage tax returns (the ATO app works too). First-timers should link myGov to the ATO a day or two before lodging. The ATO’s guide to lodging online with myTax covers the setup.

Warning: lodge only through myGov or a registered tax agent. etax.com.au is a private business that charges a fee — its name is widely regarded as designed to catch people searching for the ATO’s old “e-tax”.

2. Every income statement marked “tax ready”

Your employer sends pay data to the ATO through Single Touch Payroll; it appears in myTax as an income statement. Employers must finalise it by 14 July (31 July for 19 or fewer staff), and banks, share registries, health funds and agencies feed in through July and August. Each statement is either “tax ready” — final, safe to use — or not.

By late October this should be settled. If a statement still isn’t tax ready days out, call the employer — only they can finalise it. The ATO says early lodgers are twice as likely to make a mistake, and it adjusts more than 230,000 returns a year against third-party data.

3. Correct bank details

The ATO no longer sends refund cheques. A wrong BSB or a closed account means the refund bounces or stalls — one of the most common refund complaints every year. Update your bank details in ATO online services before you lodge.

4. Your deduction records

Receipts for work expenses, a diary or logbook for car and home-office claims, donation receipts, last year’s tax agent invoice. The full rules are below.

5. A rough estimate of your position

Run your numbers through our income tax calculator first, so the myTax figure doesn’t surprise you.

The myTax walkthrough, step by step

1. Pick the 2026 return. myTax labels returns by the year they end — the one you’re lodging now ended 30 June 2026. Select it and prepare it.
2. Personalise the return. myTax asks whether you had salary, interest, dividends, rental income, capital gains, a HELP debt, private health cover. Answer honestly — this controls which sections appear. Sold shares or crypto but answer “no” to capital gains and that section never shows up. When in doubt, answer yes: an empty section costs nothing; a missing one costs an amendment.
3. Check every line of pre-filled income. Go through each income statement, bank interest figure, dividend and government payment. Add what hasn’t pre-filled: interest from smaller institutions, distributions, crypto disposals, rental income, foreign income, cash work. Pre-fill is a starting point — you remain responsible for declaring everything.
4. Claim your deductions. Work through the section methodically: car, work-from-home, clothing, self-education, donations, income protection, last year’s agent fee. Don’t invent round numbers — the ATO compares claims against occupation averages.
5. Offsets and private health insurance. Your health fund’s statement pre-fills here. No private hospital cover all year and income over $101,000 (singles)? Expect the Medicare levy surcharge — see our Medicare levy guide.
6. Review the estimate, confirm bank details, lodge. If the refund or bill differs wildly from your expectation, stop and find out why — it’s almost always a missing income line or a mistyped deduction.

Worked example: Sarah’s 2025-26 return, end to end

Sarah is a marketing coordinator in Melbourne. She earned $92,000, has a HELP debt, and held private hospital cover all year.

Step 1 — Income: $92,000

Her employer’s income statement shows as tax ready in myTax: $92,000 gross, PAYG withholding already taken out.

Step 2 — Deductions: $3,900

Deduction	Calculation	Amount
Work from home (fixed rate)	70c × 1,200 hours	$840
Car expenses (cents per km)	88c × 3,000 km	$2,640
Donations to registered charities	receipts kept	$200
2024-25 tax agent fee	invoice kept	$220
Total deductions		$3,900

Taxable income: $92,000 − $3,900 = $88,100.

Step 3 — The tax calculation (2025-26 resident rates)

Component	Calculation	Amount
Income tax	$4,288 + 30c × ($88,100 − $45,000)	$17,218
Medicare levy (2%)	2% × $88,100	$1,762
HELP repayment	15c × ($88,100 − $67,000)	$3,165
Low income tax offset	fully phased out at $66,667	$0
Total liability		$22,145

The HELP line uses the new marginal system that started in 2025-26: nothing on the first $67,000, then 15 cents per dollar above it — see the ATO’s repayment rates table. Her low income tax offset is zero because it fully phases out at $66,667 (see our tax offsets guide). Bracket rates are on the ATO’s resident tax rates page — note the bottom rate is 16% for this return, dropping to 15% from 2026-27.

Step 4 — What her employer already withheld: $23,978

Withholding	Amount
PAYG income tax + Medicare on $92,000	$20,228
Extra HELP withholding (15c × $25,000)	$3,750
Total withheld	$23,978

Step 5 — The result: a $1,833 refund

$23,978 withheld − $22,145 owed = $1,833 back. Her employer withheld on the full $92,000, while deductions cut her taxable income to $88,100 — and her HELP withholding ($3,750) slightly overshot her actual HELP liability ($3,165).

Deductions and the evidence rules people get wrong

The ATO’s three golden rules: you must have spent the money yourself (not been reimbursed), it must be directly related to earning your income, and you must have a record to prove it. The details that trip people up:

• The $300 exception. Total work-related claim of $300 or less? You can claim without full receipts — but you still need to show you spent the money and how you calculated it. It does not cover car expenses, meal allowances or travel allowances. Claim $301 and you need written evidence for all of it.
• Car: 88c per kilometre. The 2025-26 cents-per-km rate, capped at 5,000 work-related km per car — maximum $4,400. No fuel receipts needed under this method, but you must record how you worked out the kilometres (diary or the myDeductions app). The home-to-work commute is never deductible — the most common car-expense error, and the ATO’s closest-watched category in 2026. Our car expenses guide covers logbook vs cents-per-km.
• Work from home: 70c per hour. The 2025-26 fixed rate, but you need a record of all your hours for the whole year — estimates alone aren’t accepted — plus evidence of at least one covered running cost. Phone and internet can’t be claimed on top; the rate bundles them. See our work-from-home guide.
• The boring ones people skip. Donations to registered charities, income protection premiums, last year’s tax agent fee, union fees — routinely left off myTax returns, each worth real money at your marginal rate. The full list is in our deductions checklist.

Mistakes that cost real money

1. Lodging with income missing. If an employer, bank or share registry hasn’t reported and you lodge anyway, data-matching catches the gap and the ATO amends your assessment — usually after you’ve spent the refund.
2. Claiming the commute. Home to your normal workplace is private travel. Trips between workplaces or to a temporary location are different — the daily commute never is.
3. The suspicious 5,000 km. Claiming the maximum 5,000 km at 88c every year is a stated ATO red flag. Keep an honest diary.
4. Double-dipping the home office. On the 70c fixed rate, electricity, internet and phone are already bundled — claiming them separately is double-dipping.
5. Forgetting disposals that never hit your bank. Crypto-to-crypto swaps, sell-and-rebuy share trades, reinvested dividends — all CGT events even with no cash changing hands. The ATO has data-matched crypto exchanges since 2019.
6. Wrong bank details. No cheques anymore. Check BSB and account number in ATO online services before lodging, not after.
7. Assuming the agent extension. The cut-off to be on an agent’s client list is 31 October 2026 — it does not roll over to the 2 November weekend extension.

myTax or a tax agent?

myTax is free and handles simple PAYG returns well — pre-fill does most of the work, and for someone like Sarah it’s genuinely under an hour. An agent earns their fee with complexity: rentals, share and crypto portfolios, a side business, foreign income, capital gains events.

Cost: roughly $150 to $400 for a straightforward individual return. The fee is deductible — on next year’s return, at your marginal rate only. A $250 fee at the 30% bracket (plus 2% Medicare) gets back about $80, not $250. Anyone saying the fee “comes straight back” is selling you something.

The other real reason for an agent is time. Taxpayers on a registered agent’s client list at 31 October 2026 generally get until 15 May 2027 (a Saturday, so effectively Monday 17 May 2027) — and with tax owing paid by then, lodgement by 5 June 2027 avoids the failure-to-lodge penalty. Exceptions: prior-year returns still outstanding at 30 June 2026 mean you’re due 31 October 2026 regardless; a latest assessed bill of $20,000+ brings the due date to 31 March 2027. Either way, you sign the return and you are legally responsible for it.

After you lodge: what happens next

Your notice of assessment and refund

Allow up to two weeks for an electronically lodged return; most land within about 12 business days. Track progress in the ATO app or myGov. Two annual surprises: the myTax estimate is calculated before debts (the ATO must legally apply your refund against outstanding debts first), and refunds go to the bank account on your ATO record.

If you owe money

Payment is due 21 November 2026 (effectively Monday 23 November 2026). Can’t pay in full? Contact the ATO before the due date — payment plans are routine. The general interest charge runs from the day after the due date and is no longer deductible.

If you made a mistake

Do not lodge a second return. Duplicates create confusion and slow everything down. Wait for your notice of assessment, then lodge an amendment via myGov (ATO online services → Manage tax returns → Amend). Individuals generally have two years from the day after the assessment issues. If the error is the ATO’s, not yours, the path is an objection. (Sole traders get four years from the 2024-25 year.)

Keep records for five years

Written evidence must be kept for five years from lodgement — receipts, diaries, logbooks, donation receipts, dividend statements. A phone photo of a receipt is fine; a fading thermal-paper receipt in a shoebox is a gamble. The free myDeductions app is the simplest option.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to lodge if I earned less than $18,200?

Generally no — Australian resident, wages only, under the tax-free threshold, no tax withheld. But if any tax was withheld, lodge to get it back. And if you don’t need to lodge, file a non-lodgment advice so the ATO doesn’t chase you.

My income statement still isn’t “tax ready” and the deadline is days away. What do I do?

Contact your employer immediately — only they can finalise it. Don’t lodge with a known-missing employer; the ATO will data-match it later and amend you. Last resort: lodge on final payslip figures and amend once it lands.

Can I sign up with a tax agent after 31 October to get the extension?

No. You must be formally on the agent’s client list by 31 October 2026, and this cut-off does not shift to the 2 November weekend rollover.

Do I get the tax agent’s fee back as a refund?

Only a fraction. It’s a deduction on next year’s return, not a credit — a $250 fee saves roughly $75–$115 depending on your marginal rate.

I already lodged but spotted a mistake — lodge again?

Never lodge a second return. Wait for your notice of assessment, then amend through myGov. You have two years from the day after the assessment. An amendment adjusts the return rather than replacing it.

Why is my refund smaller than the myTax estimate?

The estimate is calculated before debts. The ATO must legally apply your refund against outstanding debts first — old tax debt, Centrelink overpayment, child support. The other common cause is a data mismatch flagged in processing (often from lodging before pre-fill completed), which puts the return “under review”.

The bottom line

Three things: link the ATO to your myGov, don’t lodge until every income statement is tax ready, and declare everything while claiming every deduction you’re entitled to — with records. The effective deadline is Monday 2 November 2026, but the queues and your own stress levels reward doing it this week. And if your return has rentals, shares or a side business, consider whether this is the year to hand it to a registered agent before the 31 October cut-off.