A lot of people are saying they didn’t get a PAYG summary/group certificate and are wondering what to do about it.
Let’s clear this up…
Do I need a PAYG to do my tax return?
No, you don’t need a PAYG summary/group certificate if, like most Australians, you do your tax return with a tax agent like Etax.
Etax gets your PAYG details directly from the ATO and calculates your tax refund, right on your screen. To try it, you can start here.
If you already use Etax, you can just log in to your Etax account in and it’ll be easy.
Lodge Your Tax Return Right Now
PAYG Not Needed – Etax checks it for you
What you need to know about your PAYG summary
To make things confusing, there are a few names for a document that just contains your annual income and tax paid by your employer to the ATO:
- PAYG Summary
- PAYG Statement
- Group Certificate
- Income Statement
In earlier years, you needed a PAYG to do your tax return and get a tax refund.
Now, most people learn about their pay just by looking at payslips.
And as for your tax return, Etax gets the PAYG info for you, automatically.
Do I Have to Get My PAYG Payment Summary or Income Statement at MyGov?
The ATO told employers not to give employees their PAYG summaries anymore. Does it seem strange to get less information than before?
The ATO wants you to go hunting online for your PAYG at tax time, even if you don’t need to. This is to get you to register with the Government’s MyGov website when you try to find your PAYG/group certificate. If you go there, they’ll ask you to lodge a return, right then and there, on your own and without help, instead of using a tax agent.
People who search for a PAYG on MyGov and accidentally click the “lodge” button while there are more likely to claim fewer or no deductions than when using a tax agent. This means a smaller refund for you, and more money for the ATO.
If you lodge at MyGov, nobody will check your return. MyGov won’t help you find deductions to boost your refund. You’ll be on your own with any ATO problems. If the ATO disagrees with the details you claim, they’ll often just change it and send you whatever refund they decided on. But, that’s not always right if it’s something you could claim but entered incorrectly.
The funny thing is, even if you use MyGov for your taxes, you don’t need a PAYG or Income Statement!
How do I get my PAYG summary?
The Government changed the rules for employers. Instead of giving employees their PAYG, employers are supposed to send the details directly to the Government. The only place they’ll tell you to find those details is at the Government website.
So, if you want an actual copy of your PAYG (now called an income statement), you can ask a tax agent for help, or else, get ready to put in some effort on a Government website.
Why? Well, you need to create a MyGov account, then link that account to the ATO. This may sound simple, however, as anyone with experience on government websites knows, you may find yourself down a rabbit hole.
It goes something like this: First, if you share an email address with your partner, you need to create a new one for yourself. You enter all your personal information, including the text codes they send. To prove who you are, you then need to answer ‘secret’ questions from information contained in your prior year statements. So if you don’t remember what they are, you’ll need to find those. After all that, you can ring a call centre to request a code. It can take a while to get through, so make yourself a coffee before you start. Once you are sent the link, you use it to link one account to another.
Using MyGov, don’t forget to make a note of any error numbers along the way, so you can follow the links for an explanation of what went wrong. Errors are so common, the ATO actually includes them in their instructions.
At Etax, we are qualified tax agents who are all about making tax returns easy. For sure, we are biased, but based on the feedback we get from our clients, we think there’s a better way to get your payment info and do your taxes, right here.
