Do your own tax return – it’s not that taxing

DO-it-yourself tax isn’t as scary as some might think. For as long as I can remember I’ve forked out hundreds of dollars every year to pay an accountant to handle my tax affairs.

But thanks to the brilliant – and free – portal site myTax, I decided it was time to give it a crack myself. This is not to say accountants aren’t important people – they can come in very handy when you’ve got complex financial matters.

But for those with relatively straightforward finances, for instance if you have shares, property, health insurance, online savings accounts and some work tax deductions, then I’d suggest giving your tax return a red-hot go yourself.

I logged into my myGov account – this is linked to the Australian Taxation Office portal where you can access myTax. The information the ATO had already gathered on me included my income, health insurance details and bank account interest – all thanks to clever data-matching tools that can detect our personal information and drop it into myTax. So already plenty of my information was where it had to be.

With some other financial matters to handle, it involved me pulling out my folder of receipts for the last financial year – a godsend when it comes to tax time. And a good plan of attack was to have last year’s return handy so I could mimic it – my affairs hadn’t changed that much. After an hour or so of data entry, I’m kicking myself I didn’t start doing this sooner.

The myGov tax portal is smooth and easy to follow.

There are plenty of online resources that can help you navigate the questions.