Children's tax returns

I managed to finish off the kids' tax returns for the 2010, 2011 and 2012 financial years using eTax, although I had to print out the hardcopies to send in by mail (as it is too late to lodge the 2010 or 2011 returns online using eTax).

If DS1 and DS2 only had the few dollars of interest earned on their bank accounts as income it wouldn't be worthwhile doing their tax returns at all, but since they also have some shares (DS2) and a managed fund investment (DS1's paper round money), I have to lodge their tax returns for them if they are to get the franking credits etc. refunded.

Using eTax for simple tax returns like these was pretty painless, although eTax still makes you wade through a whole lot of irrelevant items if you only have a couple of items to complete. Perhaps a single page with yes/no check boxes could be used to skip items that aren't required?

The estimated tax refunds calculated by eTax are:

Year     DS1    DS2
2009/10  59.70  13.00 
2010/11  76.48  19.00 
2011/12  87.89  45.00 

Although the amounts aren't huge, it was still worthwhile spending a few hours filling in the returns so that the kids will get some extra money in their bank accounts.

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