Tax Return 2026: Key Dates and How to Maximise Your Refund

The 2025-26 financial year ended on 30 June 2026, so tax return season is here. Most advice about maximising a refund is a list of deductions, which is useful but incomplete — it tells you what to claim without telling you what a claim is worth. Those two things are not the same, and the gap between them is where the money is.

A $1,000 deduction returns $230 to someone earning $45,000 and $335 to someone earning $50,000. It returns $320 at $100,000. And for one particular taxpayer it can return more than double its own value. Here is the whole picture for the 2026 return.

Key dates for the 2026 tax return

• From 1 July 2026 you can lodge your 2025-26 return.
• Wait until late July. Employers, banks, health funds and share registries report to the ATO through July. Once that pre-fills, there is less to type and far less chance of an amendment that delays your refund.
• 31 October 2026 is the deadline to lodge yourself — but it falls on a Saturday, so in practice the ATO accepts lodgment on the next business day, Monday 2 November 2026.
• If you use a registered tax agent you generally get a later deadline, but you need to be on their books before 31 October. That concession can also be withdrawn if you have prior-year returns outstanding.
• Online returns are typically processed in about two weeks.

What's new for this return

Study and training loan repayments changed shape. This is the largest change for the 2025-26 year and most summaries miss it. Repayments used to be a single flat percentage applied to your whole repayment income, from an 18-band table starting at $54,435. From 2025-26 they are marginal, like income tax: nothing below $67,000, then 15c in the dollar on income between $67,000 and $125,000, then 17c above that.

Two consequences. The threshold jumped by $12,565, so a lot of people who repaid last year will repay nothing this year. And the old cliff is gone — an extra dollar of income used to be able to lift the rate applied to every dollar you earned. The HELP Repayment Calculator runs the new bands.

Tax rates themselves are unchanged. The 2025-26 rates match 2024-25: 16% from $18,201, then 30%, 37% and 45%. The legislated cut to 15% starts on 1 July 2026, so it applies to next year's return, not this one. See the Salary Tax Calculator and the tax cuts page.

Before you lodge, a quick estimate with the Tax Refund Estimator means no surprises.

What a deduction is actually worth

A deduction reduces your taxable income, so it returns your effective marginal rate — which is not the same as your tax bracket. Medicare levy and the low income tax offset both change the answer:

Read that table twice, because two rows contradict what nearly everyone assumes.

A deduction is worth more at $50,000 than at $100,000. The low income tax offset withdraws at 1.5c in the dollar between $45,000 and $66,667, so every dollar of income in that band is taxed at 30% plus the 2% Medicare levy plus 1.5c of vanishing offset — 33.5%. Above $66,667 the offset is gone and the rate settles back to 32%. If your income sits in that band, deductions are worth more to you than to someone earning half as much again.

And a deduction is worth more at $30,000 than at $45,000. The Medicare levy phases in at 10c in the dollar across roughly $27,000 to $34,000, so a dollar of income in that range carries 16% tax plus 10% levy — 26%. Just past the shade-in, from about $34,000 to $37,500, the rate drops to a clean 18%, and it is the only stretch of the whole scale with neither the levy phasing in nor the offset phasing out.

That also explains the $45,000 row, which otherwise looks wrong. The low income tax offset withdraws in two stages, not one: 5c in the dollar from $37,500 to $45,000, then 1.5c from $45,000 to $66,667. So the rate runs 18% → 23% → 33.5% → 32% as income rises, and $45,000 is the worst income on the table above at which to hold a deduction — a dollar claimed there returns less than at any other row. The one place it is worth less still is that clean window just below the first taper, which no row here lands on.

The cliff where a deduction pays for itself twice

The Medicare levy surcharge is not a marginal tax. It is charged on your entire income for surcharge purposes the moment you cross the threshold without an appropriate level of hospital cover.

For 2025-26 the single threshold is $101,000 and the first tier is 1%. So:

• At $101,000 the surcharge is nil
• At $101,001 it is $1,010.01

One dollar of income costs $1,010.01. Which means a deduction that takes you back under the line is worth extraordinarily more than its face value: a $500 deduction that moves you from $101,400 to $100,900 saves $1,174.00 in total tax — an effective rate of 234.8%.

The family threshold is $202,000, lifted by $1,500 for each dependent child after the first. Check where you land with the Medicare Levy Surcharge Calculator, and note the surcharge is usually more than a basic hospital policy would have cost — which is the entire point of it.

If you have a study loan, deductions are worth far more

Repayment income is your taxable income plus reportable fringe benefits, reportable super contributions and net investment losses. Deductions reduce it, so they cut your compulsory repayment as well as your tax.

On $70,000 with a HELP debt, a $1,000 deduction saves $320 in tax and $150 in compulsory repayment — $470 combined, a 47% effective rate. That is the same return a $200,000 earner gets, on less than half the income.

Worth being clear about what that means: the repayment reduction is not a refund of a debt you no longer owe. It is a smaller compulsory payment this year against a loan that still indexes. It improves your cash flow rather than your net position, which is a real benefit but a different one.

Deductions people most often miss

The test has four parts: you spent the money, it relates to earning your income, you were not reimbursed and you have a record. The commonly forgotten ones:

• Working from home. The 70c-per-hour fixed rate covers electricity, gas, internet, phone, stationery and computer consumables. You still claim depreciation on equipment separately. See work from home deductions and the WFH calculator.
• Car for work. Trips between workplaces, to clients or to pick up supplies. Not the commute. Compare the cents-per-kilometre and logbook methods with the Car Expense Calculator and this comparison.
• Self-education that maintains or improves a skill you use in your current job, or is likely to increase your income from it.
• Tools, equipment, union fees and professional memberships. Items over $300 are depreciated rather than claimed outright.
• Donations of $2 or more to a deductible gift recipient.
• Income protection insurance premiums, where the policy is held outside super.
• The cost of managing your tax affairs, including last year's agent fee and any interest the ATO charged you.
• A personal deductible super contribution, if you lodge a notice of intent with your fund before you lodge your return. Below about $58,700 of total income, not claiming it can be worth more.

What the $300 rule actually says

You can claim up to $300 of work-related expenses in total without keeping written evidence. That is a substantiation concession, not an allowance.

You still have to have spent the money, on something genuinely work-related, and be able to explain how you worked the figure out. Claiming $300 because $300 is allowed is a false statement, and it is the easiest kind for the ATO to test, because they can see whether your occupation plausibly incurs any such expense at all.

Note also what the $300 does not cover: car expenses, meal allowances, award transport payments and travel allowances sit outside it and have their own rules. And once your total work-related claims exceed $300, you need records for all of them, not just the amount above $300.

Things people claim that are not deductible

• The commute. Home to a regular workplace is private, even if you carry tools, take calls or work unusual hours.
• Conventional clothing. A suit is not deductible. Occupation-specific uniforms, protective gear and compulsory branded uniforms are.
• Self-education for a new field. Study that gets you into a different occupation is not deductible against your current income, however sensible the plan.
• Coffee, lunch and everyday food while at work.
• Anything you were reimbursed for. If the money came back, the deduction did not survive it.

Before you lodge

1. Wait for the pre-fill, then check it rather than trusting it. Pre-filled data is a copy of what a third party reported and it can be wrong or incomplete.
2. Claim everything you are entitled to and nothing you are not. The ATO data-matches bank interest, dividends, share and crypto disposals, rental bonds and health cover.
3. Keep the records for five years from lodgment.
4. Check whether you crossed the surcharge threshold, because that is the single largest avoidable amount on this list.
5. Note what to do differently before next 30 June — bringing forward deductible spending, or a deductible super contribution, only works before the year ends.