[TerryLee]

Has anyone have a positive experience with doing the tax return online - there seems to be quite a few services (etax.com.au, elodge.com.au), but haven't been able to find any credible reviews that their services is ok. It could easily be that they use some overseas facilities, and the personal and financial data can be lost or stole.

We have incurred quite a bit of medical expenses this year, and also started renting out our property, so I expect this year tax return won't be as vanilla as in previous years.

If you have used these online tax return services before - can you share is it worth a try or should I go with a "old school non-online" accountant?

Or if you can recommend the accountant who can help to lodge the return via email (I can send the all docos and summaries over email) - please message me.

[SeaPrincess]

I dont know about etax.com.au, but Etax is the ATO's own tax return program. You download it from the ATO, fill in your info and when you lodge your return, it connects to the ATO and submits the info. Most of the data is stored in a file on your own computer. It's pretty easy to do, tells you if your answers mean you don't qualify for certain sections so you don't waste time trying to figure it out. Even medical and rental properties are easy enough. I used it every year until I got a Mac, but the ATO only do it for PC.

[PinkyBlue]

Yes like PP said, Etax is free and its the governments...you have to go to the ATO's website though. However, i think it has closed as the deadline is the 31st of October. You could ring any accounting firm and ask them to send your stuff into them. People post or email us there tax return information, and we just ring them if we see something missing or have questions.

[TerryLee]

Yes like PP said, Etax is free and its the governments...you have to go to the ATO's website though. However, i think it has closed as the deadline is the 31st of October.

I called up ATO and they gave me the extension till the end of the November.
I used ETax before, but this year I would rather do it via accountant (largely because of the property part of the return).

You could ring any accounting firm and ask them to send your stuff into them. People post or email us there tax return information, and we just ring them if we see something missing or have questions.

If you are the accountant and you do personal income taxes - do you mind to private message me with your/your firm contact details.

[TerryLee]

I dont know about etax.com.au, but Etax is the ATO's own tax return program. You download it from the ATO, fill in your info and when you lodge your return, it connects to the ATO and submits the info. Most of the data is stored in a file on your own computer. It's pretty easy to do, tells you if your answers mean you don't qualify for certain sections so you don't waste time trying to figure it out. Even medical and rental properties are easy enough. I used it every year until I got a Mac, but the ATO only do it for PC.

Thank you shmach.

Sorry for not being clear in my first post. I knew about etax (etax.com.au probably should not been allowed to use the name of government's software as a name for a commercial web site, but it is a bit of a gray area, where I should admit, not and expert of) program and have used it to lodge the taxt return in a previous years.

This year though, I expect the tax return to be a more complicated and thus I seek a help of an accountant. I called a few accountants in our area and even though they said they could do the return over the email (as I won't be able to meet them within a reasonable working hours anyway) they were not able to explain (probably because they don't practice it much) how exactly should I send the tax related information to them (a spreadsheet summary, or each receipt, etc).

So I went to check for online tax return services, whom I would expect to be experts in doing tax returns via internet and email, but the very cheap price (three times cheaper I got quoted by an accountant) and no credible reviews got me thinking about the quality/suitability of their service.

[iwanttosleepin]

My accountant is in Queensland. We are in Dubai (in the Middle East). I haven't seen her in many years well before I started using her accountancy services. She has been my parents accountant for 20 years.

I think we paid her about $250 each to do our returns.

Ours was fairly straightforward and our only thing is an investment property. but i had already done the schedules and had all the receipts.

If you can find an accountant via word of mouth (my parents, and all my siblings use her) then this is what I recommend.

Until this year I did our tax myself via etax which is the ato government software.