Your tax year as a story: four choices that shape your return
If you lodge your own 2025–26 return, it is due Monday 2 November 2026: 31 October falls on a Saturday, so the deadline moves to the next business day. How that week feels is decided much earlier, by four choices — how you claim working from home, where your records live, whether a side income registers for GST, and who lodges. Pick your path and Fin shows where each one leads, with the ATO rule behind every turn.
The four choices at a glance
Neither side of any choice is wrong. Each one trades time now against time later, or simplicity against a bigger claim.
| When | The choice | One way | The other way | The rule that decides it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 2025 | How will you claim working from home? | The fixed rate. 70 cents for every hour, and one multiplication in October. | Actual cost. The work share of each real bill. | An estimate of hours is not accepted for the fixed rate — only a record made at the time you worked them. Source |
| August 2025 | Where will your records live? | As you go. A minute now, nothing to rebuild later. | The shoebox. Everything in one place, sorted in October. | Written evidence is kept for 5 years from the date you lodge the return — longer for things you are still depreciating. Source |
| February 2026 | Register the side business for GST? | Stay unregistered. Below $75,000, registration is optional. | Register anyway. GST credits in, GST on every invoice out. | Some work needs GST from the first dollar whatever the turnover: taxi and ride-sourcing, and — on the ATO’s registration page as updated in September 2026 — income earned through the sharing economy or digital platforms. Source |
| October 2026 | Lodge it yourself, or hand it to a tax agent? | Lodge it yourself. Free in myTax, due Monday 2 November 2026. | A registered tax agent. More time, a second pair of eyes, and a fee you can claim. | If 31 October falls on a weekend, the due date for lodging your own return is the next business day. Source |
October 2026 · The night before
Four days to go
Thursday 29 October 2026. The kettle has just clicked off and myTax is open on your laptop. Your 2025–26 return is due, and because 31 October falls on a Saturday this year, the deadline for lodging it yourself moves to Monday 2 November 2026.
You design for a living: four days a week on a salary, two of them at a desk in your living room, and since February a handful of freelance clients of your own. Whether the next hour feels calm or frantic was settled months ago, in four small moments that hardly felt like decisions at the time.
Fin was there for each of them. Rewind to July 2025.
Your path through the year
0 of 4 chosenEach fork is a choice below. Pick one and the river follows you — tap a numbered buoy to jump to it.
- Working from home
- Not chosen yet
- Records
- Not chosen yet
- GST
- Not chosen yet
- Lodging
- Not chosen yet
July 2025 · Choice 1 of 4
The desk in the living room
It is the first week of the 2025–26 income year. Two days at home has become the routine, and the desk in the living room has quietly turned into an office. You feel organised, a little smug even, and there is one choice worth making before the year runs away with you.
How will you claim working from home?
The fixed rate
70 cents for every hour, and one multiplication in October.
The ATO fixed rate for 2025–26 is 70 cents an hour, and it covers energy, internet, phone and stationery in one figure. The price of that simplicity is a record: the actual hours you work from home, kept as you work them, across the whole year.
Where it leads: 690 hours × 70c = $483, if every hour is on record
Actual cost
The work share of each real bill.
You claim the extra cost of working at home bill by bill: a share of the electricity, the internet, the phone. It tends to claim more when you are home most days in a room set aside for work. At two days a week it usually claims a little less, and each bill is kept with how you worked out its share.
Where it leads: About $460 from the work share of each bill
The rule that decides it: An estimate of hours is not accepted for the fixed rate — only a record made at the time you worked them. ATO — Fixed rate method
August 2025 · Choice 2 of 4
The first receipt
A monitor arm, $89, bought on a Saturday morning because your neck asked for it. The receipt is in your hand, and the real question is where it goes — and with it every receipt, bill and hours note for the next eleven months.
Where will your records live?
As you go
A minute now, nothing to rebuild later.
You photograph each receipt the day you get it and note your home hours in a calendar every Friday. With your bank connected, 2Fin keeps each receipt with the transaction that paid it, so the bills are matched long before October. The hours stay yours to record: 2Fin takes a yearly total, it does not keep the timesheet.
Where it leads: Kept as you go, matched to transactions
The shoebox
Everything in one place, sorted in October.
Receipts go in one box, bills stay in your inbox, and October-you does the sorting. It is a real strategy — one long evening instead of fifty small moments — and for receipts and bills it mostly works. Hours are the exception, and the exception arrives in October.
Where it leads: Rebuilt in one evening in October
The rule that decides it: Written evidence is kept for 5 years from the date you lodge the return — longer for things you are still depreciating. ATO — Records you need to keep
February 2026 · Choice 3 of 4
The café menu
The café two streets over asks whether you would redesign their menu. Then the owner’s friend wants a logo. By the end of February you have an ABN, two invoices out and a guess at the year: around $12,000 of freelance income on top of your salary.
You feel proud, and slightly nervous, because the arithmetic has changed: your salary has tax taken out every pay, and your invoices do not.
Register the side business for GST?
Stay unregistered
Below $75,000, registration is optional.
With a GST turnover well under the $75,000 threshold you do not have to register. Your invoices stay simple and there is no business activity statement to lodge; the trade-off is that you cannot claim GST credits on what you buy for the business. Watch the running total: once your turnover reaches the threshold, or you expect it to, you have 21 days to register.
Where it leads: Not registered — no BAS, no GST credits
Register anyway
GST credits in, GST on every invoice out.
Registering voluntarily lets you claim GST credits on business purchases, and some clients prefer an invoice that shows GST. In exchange you add GST to your prices, lodge business activity statements, and generally stay registered for at least 12 months once you choose it.
Where it leads: Registered — lodging BAS, claiming GST credits
The rule that decides it: Some work needs GST from the first dollar whatever the turnover: taxi and ride-sourcing, and — on the ATO’s registration page as updated in September 2026 — income earned through the sharing economy or digital platforms. ATO — Registering for GST
October 2026 · Choice 4 of 4
Lodgement week
Back to Thursday night. Everything from July has arrived at once: the hours, the bills, the café invoices, the monitor arm.
Lodge it yourself, or hand it to a tax agent?
Lodge it yourself
Free in myTax, due Monday 2 November 2026.
myTax, through myGov, pre-fills your salary and the tax already withheld; you add the work-from-home claim, your other deductions and the freelance income with its expenses. If the return shows a tax bill, payment is generally due by 21 November.
Where it leads: Yourself, by Mon 2 Nov
A registered tax agent
More time, a second pair of eyes, and a fee you can claim.
Engage a registered tax agent before 31 October and they can generally lodge later than that under their own lodgment schedule. You hand over the same records either way. The agent’s fee is a cost of managing your tax affairs, claimed in the income year you pay it.
Where it leads: Through an agent engaged before 31 October
The rule that decides it: If 31 October falls on a weekend, the due date for lodging your own return is the next business day. ATO — Preparing your tax return
Your year, in four lines
Make the four choices above and your ending appears here.
Whichever path you took: what to have ready before you lodge
- Hours worked from home, as recorded during the year (fixed rate), or each bill and how you worked out its work share (actual cost).
- Receipts for work purchases. An item over $300 is generally claimed over its effective life rather than all at once.
- Every freelance invoice and business expense, with GST shown if you are registered.
- If you are using a tax agent, the date you engaged them, before 31 October.
- Everything kept for 5 years from the date you lodge.
Where this comes from
Every rule in the story was read on the ATO page linked beside it. The working-from-home figures are an illustration — two days a week for 46 weeks, with sample bills — using the ATO fixed rate of 70 cents an hour for 2025–26; the fixed rate or actual cost guide works the same example through in full. Your own answer depends on your hours, your bills and your circumstances. This is general information, not personal tax advice.
- ATO — Fixed rate method — page last updated 8 June 2026
- ATO — Records you need to keep — page last updated 8 June 2026
- ATO — Registering for GST — page last updated 14 September 2026
- ATO — Preparing your tax return — page last updated 27 April 2026
- ATO — Cost of managing tax affairs — page last updated 1 October 2026
Take it further
Both methods worked through with real numbers, and where each one goes on your return.
Organise receipts for tax →The as-you-go habit from choice two, step by step.
GST calculator →Add or remove GST from a price before you send the café its invoice.
What your accountant needs →If you chose the tax agent: the folder that makes their hour count.
Before you lodge
Tax-time questions from the story
- When is the 2025–26 tax return due if I lodge it myself?
- Monday 2 November 2026. The usual due date is 31 October, and when that falls on a weekend the ATO moves it to the next business day; in 2026, 31 October is a Saturday. If you use a registered tax agent, engage them before 31 October and they can generally lodge later under their own lodgment schedule.
- I estimated my work-from-home hours. Can I still use the fixed rate?
- Only for the hours you recorded at the time. The ATO does not accept an estimate of hours for the fixed rate method (70 cents an hour for 2025–26); its own example drops the reconstructed months and keeps the recorded ones. For the rest of the year the actual cost method may still work, if you kept the bills and can show how you worked out each work share.
- Do I have to register a small side business for GST?
- Not while your GST turnover stays under $75,000, unless your work is in a category that must register anyway: taxi and ride-sourcing, or — per the ATO’s registration page — income earned through the sharing economy or digital platforms. Once your turnover reaches the threshold, or you expect it to, you have 21 days to register. If you register voluntarily, you generally stay registered for at least 12 months.
- Can I claim the fee I pay a tax agent?
- Yes. A registered tax agent’s fee is a cost of managing your tax affairs, and it is claimed in the income year you pay it — so a fee paid in November 2026 goes on your 2026–27 return, not the one the agent is lodging.
- How long do I keep the records from this tax year?
- Five years from the date you lodge the return. For something you are claiming the decline in value of, like a laptop, it is five years from your last claim for it, which is usually longer.
Make next year the steady one
Connect your bank and Fin sorts each transaction as it lands — work, business or personal — and keeps the receipt with the payment it belongs to, so October starts with a folder instead of a box. Free to start, no card needed.
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