A lot of people are saying they didn’t get a PAYG summary. They are wondering what to do.
Let’s clear this up, quick.
Do I need a PAYG to do my tax return?
No, you don’t need a PAYG summary to do your taxes with a tax agent (like most people do, including at Etax).
If you use Etax, your PAYG details are added automatically, to make things easy and accurate.
Doing your tax return? Don’t worry about chasing after your PAYG.
Etax gets your PAYG details directly from the ATO and calculates your tax refund, right on your screen. To try it, you can start here.
(If you already use Etax, you can just log in to your Etax account in and it’ll be easy.)
Lodge Your Tax Return Right Now
PAYG Not Needed – Etax checks it for you
You don’t have to worry about a PAYG anymore, and you don’t need it to do your taxes!
It’s one less thing to worry about at tax time.
Summary about your PAYG
Let’s make this really simple.
- PAYG Summary
- PAYG Statement
- Group Certificate
- Income Statement
Those are all the same thing. They are just words on a document with your annual income and tax paid by your employer to the ATO.
In earlier years, you needed a PAYG to do your tax return and get a tax refund. Not anymore.
Now, most people learn about their pay just by looking at payslips.
And as for your tax return, Etax gets the PAYG info for you, automatically.
(New: Etax automatically adds your latest tax rebate and shows your tax refund calculation, right on your screen.)
Do I Have to Get My PAYG Summary or Income Statement at MyGov?
The ATO told employers not to give PAYG summaries to staff, anymore. Does it seem strange to get less information than before?
The ATO actually wants you to go hunting online for your PAYG at tax time, even if you don’t need to, because they want you to register at the Government’s MyGov website when you try to find your PAYG. If you go there, they’ll ask you to lodge a return, right then and there, on your own, instead of using a tax agent.
Why would the Government do all of that? Maybe, because people who search for a PAYG at MyGov will accidentally click the “lodge” button at MyGov, and end up claiming fewer deductions than they might otherwise. Which means a smaller refund for you, and more money for the ATO.
If you lodge at MyGov, nobody will check your return. MyGov won’t help you find deductions to boost your refund. You’ll be on your own with any ATO problems. If the ATO disagrees with the details you claim, they’ll often just change it and send you whatever refund they decided on.
But, that’s not always right for you.
The funny thing is, even if you use MyGov for your taxes, you don’t need a PAYG or Income Statement!
So the new ATO hype about Income Statements looks like it’s mostly just a way to pull you into MyGov. Less than one-third of Australians have started a MyGov account – and the Government doesn’t like that. They want everyone in there. They want the Government to be your only source of information about your work, income, taxes, super… The ATO even told your private health fund to stop sending information to their customers, so that’ll be another way they drag you into MyGov.
Still, it’s your choice!
If you don’t want to use MyGov, you can do your taxes without a PAYG.
How do I get my PAYG summary?
You don’t need your PAYG to do your tax return with Etax. If you need it for any other reason, you may be in for a shock.
The Government changed the rules for employers. Starting now, they are not supposed to give you a PAYG. Instead, they are supposed to send the details directly to the Government, not to you, and the only place they’ll tell you to find those details is at the Government website. (But the truth is, any decent tax agent, like Etax, will get all of that for you.)
SO if you want an actual copy of your PAYG (now called an income statement), you can ask a tax agent for help, or else, get ready for some work on a Government website.
Why? Well, you need to create a MyGov account then link that account to the ATO. This may sound simple, however, as anyone with experience of government websites knows, you may find yourself down a rabbit hole, or facing a website error or outage.
It goes something like this: First of all, if you share an email address with your partner, you need to create a new one for yourself. You enter all your personal information, including the text codes they send. To prove who you are, you then need to answer ‘secret’ questions from information contained in your prior year statements. So you’ll need to find those. After all that, you can ring a call centre to request a code. It can take a while to get through, so make yourself a coffee before you start. Once you are sent the link, you use it to link one account to another.
Using MyGov, don’t forget to make a note of any error numbers along the way, so you can follow the links for an explanation for what went wrong. Errors are so common, the ATO actually includes them in their instructions.
At Etax we are tax agents and we’re all about making tax returns easy. For sure, we are biased, but based on the feedback we get from clients, we think there’s a better way to get your payment info and do your taxes, right here.
