Tax Question.

Okay, I've set myself into a bit of a muddle.

My ex-employer has sent the last three years of group certificates to an incorrect address despite the fact that I changed my address and asked them to be resent. Last year, at tax time, I tried for two months to get in touch with the company and after a changeover of hands, noone would get back to me. I even put in a request for contact via their customer service complaint website and still nothing.

Last year I contacted the tax office and they told me the bets thing for me to do was go back through my netbanking and/or statements and work it out use a calculator on the website to work out roughly how much i would have paid and then do a Stat Dec. Problem #2 here is that I wasn't on a full time salary - I was a casual employee earning anywhere between $70 and $160 a week. So of course, that backfired.

As such I haven't completed a tax return in, well... a long time. :redface:

So - what do I do this year? I've been sent around the block trying to figure out last years and I gave up. So do I just submit this years and when questioned / fined / whatever - do I just explain / take the hit / whatever.

I'm so confused by all this stuff and I did have it all together including CL statements as well, but after moving three times in the last 12 months I can't find any of it and I'm so frustrated by it all because it's not my blooming fault! Well, I guess it is, but i had it ready to be submitted for a loooong time.

I know there's a high possibility I'm going to owe tax, and that's fine, whatever, I'll have to pay it off installments, what's peeving me is that now I don't know how to go about it. Because once again, in the last two weeks I've tried contacting the compnay again, to no avail. :(

When an employer processes the payment summaries for the year they also send a report to the ATO with all the details. So the ATO has access to your figures from that employer. Years ago I had an employer refuse to resend a copy, even though they have to, my accountant was still able to do my return, but could not give me a figure for a refund. I would suggest if you are not doing so already go to an accountant to get it all sorted, especially as there are past returns to complete.

DH was unable to get one of his payment summaries when we had to catch him up on SEVEN years worth of tax a couple of years back. the accountant simply put in a nil return - so they took whatever amount of tax he'd paid that year and didn't allow him to claim it back - as Astrid said, ATO should have a record of the amount you were paid...

c'link wise you can request a copy of your payment summary to be reissued


FWIW - because we got the accountant to do the return, we didn't end up having any penalties for all the previous years - no idea why though...

Thanks :)

So would I just put in the CL amounts then and not from the previous employer?

i wouldn't omit the other amounts - i would take what i have to an accountant, tell them you can't get the details from the former employer, and let them do their thing. it might cost you a little bit, but it gets it dealt with and out of the way

Okay, excellent. Thanks BG! :)