E-tax and Income – Gross interest. You have to wait!

OK! all you E-tax fans get ready for the latest.  Screen 1302, Income – Gross interest.  This is where you enter what interest was paid to you from your financial institution, that typically pay around 0.5% interest.  If your total interest paid is less than $1 then you do not have to declare interest paid.

Well I got to this stage and you cannot enter the amount of interest that was paid.  You have to wait for your bank, building society etc. to send the details to the ATO.  Once the ATO has the details you can then pre-fill your return which will supposedly have all the correct amounts.  You then specify what percentage is yours, if it’s a joint account.

The problem with this is I’m ready to finalise my tax return but the financial institutions have until the 15 August to post the amounts to the ATO so I now have to wait.  Apparently this is a new thing that the ATO brought into E-tax this year.

I was on the phone to the ATO for 45 minutes this morning to sort this out. Even the people at the ATO did not know about this.  I was passed onto many layers of the ATO to find out.  Shouldn’t all the people employed in the E-tax department know?  Obviously not!

So no-one is able to complete their E-tax until their financial institution posts all interest paid to the ATO.  Good luck in waiting if you want to complete your return now.