Notes on doing your own tax

What can you actually claim?

It's late June. You have a dozen ATO tabs open, a folder of receipts, and a quiet suspicion you're leaving money on the table. Every sole trader knows that night.

It's BAS time again

Every quarter, the same ritual: open the spreadsheet, re-Google what goes at G1, wonder whether that subscription counts, triple-check the due date. You've done this dance a dozen times and it never gets less tense.

So you bought a laptop in the EOFY sales

It's on the desk, it's genuinely for the business, and a voice in the back of your mind says: I can write this off, right?

Am I going to get audited?

You hit lodge in July. The refund lands in August. And somewhere in September, unprompted, the thought arrives: what if they look closely?

Can you trust AI with your tax?

It's 11pm, you have a tax question, and the chatbot answers instantly, fluently, and with total confidence. The only problem is the year it thinks it is.

Nobody withholds your tax anymore

The first invoice clears and it's all there. Every dollar. No tax withheld, no super skimmed, just the full number sitting in your account like a small miracle.