With the end of the financial year coming up, now’s a great time to get on top of your tax and super. A little planning before 30 June can help you make the most of any opportunities to reduce tax, boost your super, and avoid last-minute surprises.

This checklist outlines key things to consider and action before the financial year wraps up. It’s a simple way to stay on track and finish the year with confidence.

TAX CHECKLIST

Here are some practical things to consider before 30 June to help you tidy up your tax position and potentially reduce your bill.

Bad Debts

If you’re running a business, write off any bad debts that won’t be recovered before 30 June so they can be claimed.

Employee Bonuses and Director Fees

Planning to pay employee bonuses or director fees? Make sure they’re confirmed in writing and communicated to recipients by 30 June, even if payment happens later.

Charitable Donations

Bring forward any planned donations and have the highest-earning family member make the gift.

Remember:

• Donations must be to registered charities.
• They can’t create a tax loss.
• Keep receipts.

Prepay Interest on Loans

If you have a loan for an income-generating asset (like an investment property), consider prepaying interest before 30 June to bring forward the deduction.

Claim Work-Related or Business Costs

Bring forward costs such as repairs, stationery, or supplies by 30 June 2026. These small deductions can add up. This applies to all taxpayers, not just businesses.

Prepay Expenses

You can claim prepaid expenses, such as insurance or subscriptions.

Where the expense is:

• Under $1,000 – all taxpayers can claim the expense
• Over $1,000 – fully deductible if you’re a small business if the expense relates to a period of 12 months or less. Note that this is also available if it’s a non-business expense of individuals, such as work related expenses or rental property costs.

Write Off Old Stock

If you hold stock, write off any damaged, outdated or unsellable items before 30 June 2026.

Review Assets & Depreciation

Small businesses (turnover under $10m) can immediately deduct assets under $20,000 that were acquired from 1 July 2025 and ready to use by 30 June 2026.

Also, remove any old equipment from your depreciation schedule if it’s been sold, thrown out, or is no longer usable.

Electric Vehicles

If your business provides an electric vehicle to an employee, you may be eligible for depreciation deductions and Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) concessions.

Defer Income

If possible, delay receiving income (like issuing invoices) until after 30 June to push tax into next year.

Offset Capital Gains

Selling an asset this year with a profit? You could crystallise capital losses before 30 June to offset that gain.

Watch out: ‘wash sales’ (selling and rebuying the same asset just to get a loss) are not allowed.

Personal Services Income (PSI)

If you’re working in your own name (like a contractor or freelancer), check that your income qualifies as a business under PSI rules.

Business Losses

If your business runs at a loss, you may not be able to claim that loss if you carry on a “non-commercial business” – unless you pass one of the ATO’s tests (eg, income, asset, or profit test).

Company Loans to Shareholders (Division 7A)

If you’ve borrowed from your company, the loan needs to be properly documented, put on commercial terms and repaid.

If repaying through dividends, make sure the dividends are legally declared and paid prior to 1 July (with appropriate documentation in place).

Trust Distributions

If you’re a trustee, resolutions must be made before 30 June to properly distribute income to beneficiaries.

You also need to let your beneficiaries know what they’re entitled to.

Beneficiary TFN Reporting

If new beneficiaries gave you their TFN between April -June, you must lodge a TFN report by 31 July 2026.

Motor Vehicle Logbook

Planning to claim car expenses using the logbook method? Start now and track 12 weeks of usage (can span over two tax years). Also record your odometer readings and remember to fill out the logbook at the end of each business journey.

Private Health Insurance

Make sure you have the right level of cover to avoid the Medicare Levy Surcharge, especially if your family situation has changed (eg. new baby, separation, adult children moving off your policy).

Check Your Insurance Cover

Review your personal and business insurance needs. Not only does this provide peace of mind, some policies may also be tax deductible, especially if prepaid.

Review Your Business Structure

Is your current setup still the right one? Changes in income, family, or risk levels may mean a trust, company, or restructure could be more effective. We can help you weigh up your options.

TIP
Unused limits for 2020–21 expire after 30 June 2026 so don’t miss out.

SUPER CHECKLIST

Make the most of your super before 30 June 2026 with these smart, simple tips.

Check Your Contribution Limits

Before adding more to super, log in to myGov > ATO > Super > Information to check how much you’ve already contributed.

Tip: If you’re in an SMSF, your info may not be up to date in myGov but we can help you work this out.

Add to Super and Claim a Tax Deduction

You may be able to make a personal deductible contribution and claim it at tax time.

To be eligible:

• You must be over 18
• If you’re 67–74, you must meet the work test or qualify for a work test exemption
• If you’re over 75, you must contribute within 28 days of your birthday month

Don’t forget: To claim a tax deduction, submit a Notice of Intent to Claim a Deduction to your super fund and get their confirmation before lodging your tax return or making withdrawals, rollovers, or starting a pension.

Use Up Unused Contribution Limits

Haven’t used your full concessional contribution cap in recent years? You may be able to catch up using the carry-forward rule if your total super balance is under $500,000 on 30 June 2025.

Split Contributions with Your Spouse

You can split up to 85% of your 2024–25 concessional (pre-tax) contributions with your spouse before 1 July 2026.

This is a great way to even out your balances and plan ahead for retirement.

Note – To use this strategy, your spouse must be under their preservation age or aged 64 or younger and not retired when you make the request to your fund.

Get a Tax Offset for Spouse Contributions

If your spouse earns less than $40,000, consider making an after-tax contribution to their super.

By doing so, you could get up to a $540 tax offset while boosting their retirement savings.

Grab a Government Co-Contribution

If you earn less than $60,400 and at least 10% comes from work or running a business, you could be eligible for a government co-contribution. All you need to do is add up to $1,000 to your super and the government may add up to $500 extra.

Avoid the Division 293 Tax Trap

If your income (plus employer contributions) is over $250,000, you may pay an extra 15% tax on some of your super contributions.

Strategies like bringing forward expenses or deferring income may help keep you below the threshold.

Maximise Non-Concessional (After-Tax) Contributions

If you’re under 75, you may be able to contribute up to $360,000 in one year using the bring-forward rule.

New rules from 1 July 2026 may allow you to contribute even more – speak with us about getting the timing right.

Take Your Minimum Pension Payment

If you’re drawing a pension from your super, make sure you take the minimum amount by 30 June.

Missing the minimum may affect your fund’s tax benefits for the whole year.

Need Help?

We’re here to help you make the most of EOFY tax and super opportunities. Contact us to discuss what options might work best for your situation.

If you’ve turned 67 and want to top up your super and claim a tax deduction for doing so, there’s one extra hurdle to clear: the work test. It’s a simple requirement, but it catches people out, so it’s worth understanding when it applies and how to meet it.

What the work test is

The work test requires you to be gainfully employed for at least 40 hours in any 30 consecutive day period during the financial year you make the contribution. “Gainfully employed” means working for payment or reward as an employee or self-employed, in a business, trade or profession. Unpaid work, including volunteering, doesn’t count.

The 40 hours needs to be completed over a 30-day window in the financial year. You only need to meet it once in the year.

When it applies

Since 1 July 2022, the work test no longer applies to non-concessional contributions. However, the test still applies if you’re aged 67 to 74 and want to claim a tax deduction for a personal contribution. It’s the gateway to turning a personal contribution into a concessional (tax-deductible) one. Once you turn 75, you generally can’t make personal contributions, except for Downsizer contributions, so deductible contributions are not ordinarily available from 75.

However, there is a small window which allows personal contributions received within 28 days after the end of the month you turn 75 to be accepted.

Who checks it?

Your super fund used to ask for a work test declaration before accepting your contribution. Now, the ATO checks at the time you lodge your tax return and claim the deduction. The responsibility sits with you to keep evidence of having met the test. For example payslips, invoices, or a record of self-employed work and hours.

The work test exemption

If you’re recently retired and didn’t work in the year you made the contribution, you may still claim a deduction using the one-off work test exemption.

You must:

• have met the work test in the previous financial year
• have had a total super balance under $300,000 at the end of the previous financial year, and
• not have used the exemption before.

It’s a once-only opportunity, designed to give recent retirees a final chance to make a deductible contribution.

Claiming the deduction

Meeting the work test is only one step. To claim the deduction, you must make the contribution into your super fund and

• Lodge a “notice of intent to claim a deduction” with your fund, and
• Receive an acknowledgment from the fund before lodging your tax return.

Without that acknowledgment, the deduction can’t be claimed, even if you met the work test. The deduction also can’t create a tax loss, so size the contribution against your taxable income.

The bottom line

If you’re between 67 and 74 and planning a personal deductible super contribution, remember the work test. Forty hours of paid work in a 30-day window. Speak to us if you’re unsure whether your situation qualifies.

Even before the current war in the Middle East, the Budget has clearly been under somepressure. Recent comments from various government sources suggest that changes to the tax rules around investment properties could be under serious consideration. So, what sort of changes could we see on 12th May? And how might they affect you?

While there has been a lot of focus on the 50% CGT discount, there is also a push to restrict negative gearing – ie, the ability to offset rental losses against other income, such as salary and wages. Most other countries don’t permit this.

The 50% discount

Arguments have been advanced that the 50% discount is too generous, especially for assets that have not been held for a long time, and there are calls for reducing the discount to 331/3 % or even 25%.

Even before the current war in the Middle East, the Budget has clearly been under some pressure. Recent comments from various government sources suggest that changes to the tax rules around investment properties could be under serious consideration.

So, what sort of changes could we see on 12th May? And how might they affect you?

Another idea is to have a staggered discount, depending on how long the asset has been held.

There have also been calls to extend the existing 12 month holding period before a capital gain can qualify for the discount to, say, 18 months or 24 months.

Negative gearing

On the negative gearing issue, reform ideas range from quarantining losses altogether and offsetting them against future rental profits or against the CGT gain that arises when the property is sold to limiting negative gearing to two properties per taxpayer or to some dollar amount.

All assets or just residential property?

While many people view housing as special, the government may consider whether to apply any changes to assets more broadly, including commercial property, shares and the like.

Date of effect

If any changes made only apply to assets acquired by a taxpayer after the Budget date, then any significant revenue gains would be a long way off.

But Australians generally don’t like retrospective tax changes and the way these things have generally been handled is to make any adverse tax changes operate prospectively. After all, people have invested under the rules which existed at the time.

Applying any changes to the CGT discount or negative gearing to existing assets would be a courageous decision (in a “Yes Minister” sense), and one that the Opposition parties would relish.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?

Anyone who owns an investment property or is considering buying or selling one should probably sit back and wait for the Budget to land. There may be nothing of any consequence in it after all, but if there is you’re welcome to come and speak to us about how you are affected and what your options are.

Three recent Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) decisions on claims for car expenses have shone a light on what the law requires in relation to car logbooks.

Where you use your car for business purposes, there are two ways of making a claim – the cents per kilometre method for up to 5,000 business kilometres, or the logbook method based on the business percentage of your actual expenditure.

The logbook method will generally result in a bigger deduction where your business use of the car is high and the actual car expenditure plus depreciation is significant. Bear in mind that travelling between home and work is not generally deductible.

To work out your business percentage, you can’t just make an estimate. You need to maintain a logbook for a representative period of 12 weeks. Unless your work or personal circumstances change, the resulting business percentage can then continue to be applied for five years.

For each car journey made for business purposes during the 12-week period the logbook has to record:

• The day the journey began and the day it ended
• The car’s odometer readings at the start and the end of the journey
• The number of kilometres the car travelled on the journey
• Why the journey was made

To calculate your deduction, you use the car’s odometer readings at the start and end of the 12-week test period to work out the total number of kilometres travelled during the period and apply the total business kilometres recorded in the logbook to arrive at the business percentage.

Importantly, and this is something that is sometimes overlooked, the law requires that the record in the car logbook is made “at the end of the journey or as soon as possible afterwards”. And this is where some taxpayers come to grief.

People are busy, and promise themselves they’ll do it later, but the longer they wait the more likely they are to make mistakes. It’s actually quite difficult to accurately recall various trips you think you must have made weeks ago, and the Tax Office can usually spot the difference between a genuine logbook that has been more or less contemporaneously completed and one that has been stitched together well after the event.

While recording all your car use every day for a twelve-week period may seem burdensome, once you’ve done it you’re generally good for another 248 weeks, which isn’t a bad trade-off. You also have some flexibility about which 12-week period you use.

The three taxpayers involved in the three ART decisions referred to above were seen by the Tax Office and the Tribunal as not having made contemporaneous logbook entries, having logbook odometer readings that were inconsistent with service records, having several versions of the logbook for the same test period and in one case being a complete fabrication.

In each of the three cases there were other reasons why their claims for car expenses failed, but the Tax Office will have noted the Tribunal decisions and must be more likely in future to critically examine logbooks supporting large car expense claims to ensure they comply with the law.

It’s never too late to fix these things, so if you have any doubts about the reliability of the logbook you are using to make your motor vehicle claim, come in and see us and we’ll see if we can sort things out. $

During the COVID pandemic years, we all suffered in one way or another – in particular the small businesses who relied on customers coming through their doors.

Mr Lewis was one such small businessman who operated a “multi-gym business” and who as result of the COVID pandemic found it impossible to keep his business operating and pay staff without additional financing. In his own words:

“…the government imposed lockdowns shut down my business operations virtually overnight. I had no income, no relief fast enough to respond, and no option but to sell personal assets just to meet my basic obligations — to pay rent, staff, escalating legal costs and debts.”

So that is exactly what he did.

He arranged for the family trust of which he was a beneficiary to sell shares and to distribute the gain to him. (Luckily, the trust had made some good investments.) As a result, a $200,000 capital gain was distributed to him which he used to keep his business going and to pay staff, etc.

The problem was he was clearly assessable on that capital gain – and he sought to challenge the decision by arguing he was forced to sell the shares and that he did not really make a gain because he had to use the money to save his business.

In short, Mr. Lewis argued the Tribunal should consider his intention and his hardship, claiming the gain was not a true “profit” since proceeds offset business losses from lockdowns.

However, the Tribunal had to conclude that he had realised the capital gain and that there was no discretion in the law to exclude it or exempt it.

Furthermore, there were no CGT concessions available – and, in particular, the 50% discount was not available as the shares were not held by the trust for more than 12 months.

The moral of this story is that where a capital gain has duly been realised or come home to the taxpayer there is no discretion for the amount to be excluded from the assessment process (unless the tax law specifically provides one: eg, a roll-over).

This is the case, despite the circumstances under which gain arose – including where the taxpayer was “forced” to sell an asset or the gain “accidentally” arose. The only exception is where there has been a compulsory acquisition of an asset under relevant legislation.

Otherwise, a taxpayer can only seek relief after the assessment process by making a hardship relief application – and even then it is very difficult to succeed, especially if there were any reasonable measures a person could have taken to avoid the hardship.

If you find yourself in such circumstances, come and speak to us about the matter – and preferably before you think you may be “forced” to sell some CGT assets.

From 1 July 2026, the amount you can contribute to super will increase, creating new opportunities to boost your retirement savings.

The annual concessional contribution cap will rise from $30,000 to $32,500. These are contributions made from pre-tax money, such as employer contributions, salary sacrifice and personal deductible contributions.

Non-concessional contributions

The annual non-concessional contribution (NCC) cap will also increase from $120,000 to $130,000. These are contributions made from your after-tax money.

For people who are eligible to use the bring-forward rule, the higher caps will allow even larger contributions. From 1 July 2026, the three-year bring-forward cap will increase from $360,000 to $390,000.

Whether you can use these higher NCC caps will depend on your total super balance (TSB) at 30 June 2026. Your TSB is the total amount you have across all of your super accounts at that date, including money in accumulation and pension phase.

The table below highlights how the TSB thresholds and NCC caps will change from 2025–26 to 2026–27.

One important trap to watch is that if you have already triggered a bring-forward period before 1 July 2026, you do not get access to the new higher caps for that existing period. For example, if you triggered a three-year bring-forward in 2025–26, you remain limited to the current maximum of $360,000 across that three-year period, being until 1 July 2028. You do not get to use the new $390,000 cap.

Concessional contributions

The higher concessional cap may also create extra opportunities through catch-up concessional contributions. If your TSB is less than $500,000 at 30 June of the previous year, you may be able to use unused concessional cap amounts from the previous five years. In some cases, this could allow a very large deductible contribution to be made.

This means the lead-up to 30 June 2026 could be an important planning window. In some cases, it may make sense to delay a contribution until the new financial year to access the higher caps. In others, if you have already met a condition of release, taking a small amount out of super before 30 June may help keep your balance below a key threshold and preserve access to valuable contribution strategies.

The key message is that the higher caps could create valuable opportunities, but the rules around timing and TSB are also important. Now is a good time to check how these changes may apply to you. $

Granny flats are becoming more of a common feature of the urban environment. No doubt this is due to the ongoing and unremitting nature of the housing affordability crisis, and the relaxing of regulations about where and how they can be built. And they do seem to offer a very viable solution to the problem – at least in the short term.

However, if you are thinking of constructing one, or already have one in place, you need to be aware of all the tax implications – and they can be very significant.

Firstly, if you rent it at commercial or arm’s length rates, then not only will you be assessable on the rent (albeit being able to claim a portion of the deductions), but you will lose a part of the capital gains tax (CGT) exemption on your home. This is because you are using your home to produce income.

But in most cases, this partial CGT liability should be taxed concessionally by giving you a market value cost (at the time you first rent it) from which to calculate the gain (or loss).

Furthermore, the CGT 50% discount (or whatever is in place after the May Budget) should, in most cases, be available to reduce the amount of your assessable income.

However, where you do not rent your granny flat at commercial rates (including where the occupants may only pay their share of outgoings, such as electricity and rates) then you will not lose any CGT exemption on the home.

This will typically be the case where your granny flat is occupied by a relative, such as an adult child – or by a granny (and/or granddad), themselves!

It should also be noted that it is becoming common for the owner of the home (young adult children) to come to some sort of agreement with a parent or parents, whereby the parent/s agree to pay the price for building the granny flat in exchange for the “right to occupy” for a number of years. Likewise, such agreements may bring to an end a right to occupy.

The making of an agreement whereby “granny-flat” rights are created in another party (or bought to an end) can technically have immediate CGT consequences – despite the fact that it is made in relation to the CGT-exempt home and among family members.

However, the CGT rules provide that this will not be the case where the person acquiring the granny flat right has reached pensionable age (or has a relevant disability) and the arrangement is in writing and is not of a “commercial” nature.

These and other granny flat arrangements require good professional advice – particularly in terms of determining if such an agreement is “commercial”.

So, if you currently own a granny flat or you are thinking of constructing one for any purpose, it is important to come and speak to us – especially in terms of preserving the CGT exemption on your home (or at least maximising it).