Wednesday, September 16, 2009

More Details on Moom's Taxes



I now submitted my tax return and as promised here are all the details. You can compare these numbers to last year's too. The main differences are that I earned a salary for four months this tax year and no salary last tax year (in Australia our tax year ends on 30th June). But this year my net capital gain for tax purposes was zero versus almost $10k last year (1 AUD = 0.80 USD on 30th June). And dividend income declined due to selling stocks and companies cutting dividends. Deductions were a bit bigger. Supplement deductions are foreign margin interest and derivative losses by the way. Australian dividend deductions are Australian margin interest and depreciation costs on my computer etc. So I actually ended up earning less for tax purposes than last year.

Adjusting income to actual income rather than taxable - the main change is due to the fact that you can't deduct capital losses against other income - I really lost a pile of money. I end up getting a net 4.5% of my loss back from the ATO (Australian Tax Office). This is due to ending up with surplus franking credits - credits for corporation tax paid by Australian companies - which you can then claim back as cash. $3,700 was withheld from my wages. I get all of that back too. So we're expecting a $6,000 refund.

As I've got a salary for at least 8 months this year I may even end up paying some tax this year :)

2 comments:

Revanche said...

I like that you seem to be increasing your salary earning in increments of 4 months. :) Interesting that the AU tax year ends with the fiscal year, is that another thing America does out of step with the rest of the world, I wonder?

mOOm said...

I don't know about "fiscal years" but southern hemisphere countries tend to end tax and statistical years at June 30. Aus and NZ do and I seem to remember that Botswana does too (I did some research on cattle ranching in Botswana). I think most northern Hemisphere countries used December 31.