Tax Return Tedium
To The Australian Friday, July 20, 2007
Both sides of politics have promised reduced red tape. There is an annoying, worrying and tedious exercise many of us go through after June 30. That is digging up bank accounts to find trivial amounts of bank interest to declare in our tax return.
If we don't find them all, we get busted by the ATO later in the year. But for many ordinary Australians, bank interest is the only complication on the tax return. But for many of us, the rate of interest is so poor there is no real gain involved.
It would save an awful lot of people an awful lot of unwelcome searching if the ATO said ignore any account with bank interest of less than $100 for the year.
Philip O'Carroll