Your first tax return in Australia: what new migrants need to know

The Australian tax year and when to lodge

The Australian income year runs 1 July to 30 June — not the calendar year, and not aligned to most other countries' tax years. If you arrived partway through the year, your first return will only cover the part of the year you were here and earning, from your arrival (or start date) through to 30 June.

You can lodge your own return online from 1 July, but the ATO's usual advice is to wait until late July, because pre-fill data from employers, banks, and health funds takes a few weeks to load into your myTax return after the year closes. Lodging too early sometimes means manually entering figures that would otherwise auto-fill.

If you're lodging it yourself (not through a registered tax agent), the deadline is 31 October following the end of the income year — so for the year ending 30 June 2026, the deadline is 31 October 2026. Miss it and the ATO can apply a late-lodgment penalty, though first-time or genuine-hardship cases are sometimes waived on request. If you engage a registered tax agent before 31 October, you generally get a later deadline, into the following May — one of the practical reasons people use an agent in their first year rather than work out the rules alone.

Setting up myGov and linking the ATO

Almost everything runs through myGov now. You'll need to create a myGov account (a Digital ID login run by the government, not the ATO specifically), then link the ATO as a service inside it. The linking step usually asks a couple of identity questions drawn from your tax file number record, a recent notice, or bank details, so it can take a couple of attempts if you don't have prior ATO history — which you won't, as a new arrival.

If the standard linking process fails (common for people with no Australian tax history yet), the fallback is a phone call to the ATO with proof of identity, or linking in person if you have a myGovID/myID digital identity set up with sufficiently verified documents. Give this a buffer of a week or two before the deadline rather than leaving it to late October.

Once linked, myGov/ATO is where you'll find your pre-filled income statement (replacing the old paper group certificate — your employer reports your pay directly to the ATO through Single Touch Payroll), lodge your return via myTax, and see any refund or amount owing.

What counts as income you need to declare

Salary and wages are the obvious one — but Australia's definition of assessable income is broader than a lot of new arrivals expect. It includes: employment income (wages, salary, bonuses, allowances); interest earned on any Australian bank account, even a small amount; income from Australian shares or managed funds; any government payments that are taxable (some are, some aren't); and, if you're a tax resident (a separate question from your visa status — see the residency article in this series), income earned overseas too.

It does not automatically include things like the sale of personal items you already owned, most gifts, or (in most circumstances) your own visa or relocation costs reimbursed by an employer. But some of those edge cases genuinely depend on the specifics, and getting them wrong either overstates or understates what you owe.

Keep records as you go rather than reconstructing them in October — payslips, bank interest statements, and any overseas income evidence. The ATO's pre-fill will cover Australian employment and bank interest for accounts it can see, but it won't know about overseas income or cash income unless you tell it.

Tax file number first, everything else follows

You need a tax file number (TFN) before any of this works properly. Without one, your employer is required to withhold tax at the top marginal rate on your pay — a rate designed to be a penalty, not a fair estimate, because the system assumes you're avoiding declaring who you are. Applying is free and done directly through the ATO once you have a relevant visa in Australia; it typically takes a couple of weeks to arrive by post.

Give your TFN to your employer via the tax file number declaration form (usually done digitally on day one of a new job) and to your bank when you open an account, so interest isn't over-withheld either.

A companion article in this series (get-tfn-tax-file-number-australia) covers the TFN application step itself in detail if you haven't done it yet — do that first, then come back to this one for the return itself.

What a first-time return usually involves

For a straightforward case — one employer, no overseas income, no investment property, no business — the return itself is short: confirm your pre-filled income, add any work-related deductions you're claiming (see the deductions article in this series), confirm your Medicare levy situation, and lodge. Most people in this position get a refund, because PAYG withholding tables are calibrated slightly conservatively and because the tax-free threshold (the first $18,200 of income taxed at 0%, as at 2026) is usually only available in full if you were here the whole year — a partial year means a reduced tax-free amount, worked out proportionally, which can produce either a refund or a bill depending on how your employer withheld.

Complexity goes up fast if any of the following apply: multiple employers in the same year, income from overseas, you're on a working holiday visa (a different rate structure entirely — see the dedicated article), you did contract work under an ABN rather than as an employee, or you sold an asset like shares or crypto. None of these make a return impossible to do yourself, but each is a reason to at least sanity-check the outcome against a registered tax agent before lodging.

If money is tight, free help exists. The ATO's Tax Help program runs trained volunteers for simple returns each tax season, and a number of universities operate free community tax clinics under the National Tax Clinic program — in Canberra, for example, the Multicultural Hub runs a free fortnightly tax clinic in partnership with the University of Canberra. Worth checking what's available near you before paying anyone for a straightforward return.

Do I have to lodge a tax return in Australia if I only worked part of the year?

Generally yes, if you earned above the tax-free threshold for the period you were here or had any tax withheld from your pay — lodging is how you get withheld tax back if too much was taken out, and it's also how the ATO confirms nothing further is owed. If you genuinely earned very little, the ATO's own tool (or a registered tax agent) can confirm whether a 'non-lodgment advice' applies instead of a full return.

When does the Australian tax year start and end?

1 July to 30 June. Most people lodge their return for that year between 1 July and 31 October of the following calendar year if lodging themselves, with a later deadline available if a registered tax agent lodges on their behalf.

What happens if I don't have a myGov account yet?

You can create one free at my.gov.au, then link the ATO as a service inside it. New arrivals with no prior Australian tax history sometimes need to link by phone with the ATO rather than the automated online process — allow a couple of weeks before the deadline if the online linking fails.

Do I need to declare income I earned overseas before I moved to Australia?

Only income earned once you became an Australian tax resident generally needs declaring, and even then the rules depend on the specific dates and your residency status for tax purposes, which is a distinct question from your visa status. This is exactly the kind of question worth putting to a registered tax agent in your first year.

Is this article tax advice?

No. It's general information about how the Australian tax system works for new arrivals. Personal tax questions belong with a registered tax agent listed on the Tax Practitioners Board register; visa and migration questions belong with a MARA-registered migration agent — Migratio matches you with the latter for free.