A huge thank you to those of you who have already attempted to apply for your Director IDs and given us feedback on your experience. It’s helpful to know what’s working and what isn’t so we can hopefully help others avoid running into similar roadblocks.
When it comes to verifying your ATO-related details, here are some things we know:
The Director ID application form will reject anything older than your most current Notice of Assessment.
One of our clients attempted to verify his identity using a 30 June 2019 Notice of Assessment which was generated on the same day as his 30 June 2020 and 30 June 2021 Notices of Assessment (NOAs). The Director ID application form rejected his 2019 and 2020 NOAs in favour of the 30 June 2021 NOA. We therefore recommend you double check which tax return was the one most recently lodged with the Tax Office and use the corresponding year’s Notice of Assessment when attempting to verify your tax identity.
The Director ID application form will refuse to validate your identity if your details do not match your myGovID details.
The same client, who had previously set up a myGovID, discovered the name they had registered with myGovID was only their first name and last name and omitted their middle name, an identity field the Director ID application form specifically asks for. In other words, their myGov ID showed:
Given name/s: Mariana*
Family name: Trench
Whereas the Director ID form required the client’s FULL name:
Full name: Mariana Ocean Trench
This discrepancy in their records meant that they had to contact the myGovID support team for help with updating their myGovID record as it was not something they could do via the app. The myGovID support team subsequently advised our client to remove the myGovID app from their smartphone, deleting its contents, and reinstall it and begin anew.
If you’re experiencing a similar issue and deleting and reinstalling the app doesn’t help you, the myGovID support team can be contacted via phone on 1300 287 539 from 8:00AM local time until 6:00pm local time, Monday to Friday, or 10:00AM local time until 2:00PM local time on Saturday. International callers can phone the ATO switchboard on + 61 2 6216 1111 between 9.00AM and 5.00PM AEDT and request your call to be transferred to the myGovID support line.
The Director ID application form will refuse to validate your identity if your banking details do not match those held by the ATO, including in instances where the ATO has no banking details on record for you.
Another client struggled to get the Director ID application form to accept his BSB and Account number despite having successfully used those details previously to receive tax refunds. We discovered it had been some time since they had received a tax refund and on further investigation of their account within our Tax Agent’s Portal, we could see that no banking records were assigned to the client’s tax account.
If you similarly have an issue with your banking details being refused, please contact us so that we can investigate your tax profile within our Portal. If we can add banking details for you, we will, and that should solve this particular issue.
For any other issues, please let us know.
There may be some basic troubleshooting we can help you with. Alternatively, you may wish to contact the Australian Business Registry Services directly in the first instance on 13 62 50 between 8.00AM and 6.00PM Monday to Friday (AEDT) and then touch base with us to discuss the issue you faced and the resolution. The more information we have on hand, the more helpful we can be to others attempting to apply for their Director ID. If you are calling from overseas, the support number is +61 2 6216 3440.
Lastly, a list of supported desktop and mobile device browsers is provided below. If you find that you’re having trouble with the ABRS site for any reason, we suggest double-checking the browser you’re using and if it’s unsupported, switching across to one recommended by the ABRS.
*Not our client’s real name.
NB: Information above is true and correct at time of writing, however, may be subject to change.
More Changes to Super?
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Superannuation Outcomes for Australians and Helping Australian Businesses Invest) Bill 2021 was recently introduced to Parliament on the 27th of October 2021. The bill seeks to enact a number of changes, including:
- removing the $450-a-month threshold before an employee’s salary or wages count towards the superannuation guarantee;
- increasing the limit on the maximum amount of voluntary contributions that are eligible to be released under the First Home Super Saver Scheme from $30,000 to $50,000;
- enabling individuals aged 60 and above to make “downsizer” contributions to their superannuation plans;
- applying the work test to individuals aged between 67 and 75 who claim a deduction for personal superannuation contributions and allowing such individuals to make or receive non-concessional superannuation contributions under the bring forward rule;
- enabling superannuation trustees to choose their preferred method of calculating exempt current pension income when they have member interests in both accumulation and retirement phases for part, but not all, of the income year; and
- extending the temporary full expensing regime to 30 June 2023.
We will keep you posted as to if/when the above becomes law and where relevant, provide some guidance as to what the changes will mean for you, your business and/or your superannuation fund.
New Rental Property Fact Sheets
The Tax Office recently released a couple of new rental property-related fact sheets that we thought might be helpful.
The first relates to Body Corporate or Strata costs and confirms the deductibility of payments made to administrative funds and into general-purpose sinking funds. It also advises that payments made to a special purpose fund for capital works-related projects are to be treated as a capital item and are therefore non-tax deductible.
The second fact sheet covers rental property-related interest expenses, and the items that you can and cannot treat as tax deductible. As many rental property owners end up mixing investment and private funds and loans (either intentionally or by mistake), this guide lays out the basics in terms of the impact that any private use of a property will have on deductibility of costs; the difference between re-draw and offset accounts; and the use of loan funds for private purposes.