The EOFY checklist for people with a job, a side hustle and an investment property

One employer used to mean one pre-filled return and twenty minutes in myTax. Add a side hustle and an investment property and you now run three income streams, three kinds of records, and an ATO that already knows about most of the income but none of the deductions.

The people who find EOFY painless gathered their paperwork before July, stream by stream. This checklist is that gathering, in order.

Which dates actually matter?

Four dates carry the whole season, and the first is easy: the financial year ends 30 June.

The ATO pre-fills your income statement and most third-party data (employers, banks, health funds, government agencies) by late July. Lodging in the first week of July usually means chasing corrections later, so wait until your income statement shows as tax ready.

If you lodge your own return through myTax, the deadline is 31 October, and most online returns process within about 2 weeks.

If you use a registered tax agent, their lodgment program can run well past 31 October. You must contact them before 31 October to be part of it.

All of this follows the ATO's current guidance. Dates for paying any bill on your notice of assessment come separately.

What should you gather for the job?

The employment stream mostly assembles itself. Your income statement flows to the ATO through payroll and appears in myGov marked tax ready.

So your work is the deductions side, and you should not be doing it from memory. Collect these:

• Working-from-home records: the ATO's methods require a genuine record of hours worked from home (a diary or timesheet), not an estimate made in July.
• Receipts for tools, equipment and software you use for work, apportioned for private use.
• Union and professional fees, subscriptions and self-education costs tied to your current role.
• Car and travel records for work trips that aren't the ordinary commute.
• Donations of $2 or more to deductible gift recipients, and last year's tax agent fee, which is deductible this year.

We've written a full deduction-by-deduction gameplan for salary earners, including the working-from-home and cents-per-kilometre method choices, so we won't repeat it here.

The checklist point is simpler. Those claims sit scattered across a year of bank statements, and July is the worst possible time to start finding them.

What does the side hustle need?

The side hustle needs two lists: everything it earned and everything it cost. The first list is not optional.

Platforms, banks and payment providers report data to the ATO, so freelance invoices, marketplace payouts and rideshare income are visible whether or not anyone sent you a neat annual summary. Declare all of it, then claim what it genuinely cost to earn:

• Income records: invoices, platform statements and payout histories, reconciled against the bank account the money landed in.
• Direct costs: materials, stock, software, platform fees, advertising and the work share of phone and internet.
• Equipment: items used for the hustle, apportioned if they're also personal.
• Home workspace records, where a genuine part of your home earns the income.
• GST awareness: registration becomes mandatory once GST turnover reaches $75,000, and it's worth watching the threshold before you cross it rather than after.

How long do you keep the hustle's records?

Keep every record for 5 years from the date you lodge.

Keep the hustle's money visibly separate too, if you can. A dedicated account or card turns "which of these 900 transactions were business?" into a filter rather than a day of digging.

What does the investment property need?

The rental generates the most paper and has the most money riding on getting it right. Four documents do most of the work:

• The property manager's annual statement: rent received, management fees, and the costs the agent paid on your behalf, already totalled for the year.
• Loan statements showing interest separately from principal: only the interest is deductible, and mixing the two is one of the most common errors on rental schedules.
• A depreciation schedule from a quantity surveyor: the one-off document that captures capital works and depreciation year after year; without it, many properties leave thousands unclaimed.
• Receipts for everything the agent didn't pay: council and water rates, insurance, strata, land tax, repairs and maintenance.

Then come the judgement calls. A genuine repair is deductible now, while an improvement is capital and claimed slowly, and costs must be apportioned for any period the property wasn't genuinely available to rent.

We've covered every category and trap in our investor's checklist of property deductions, which is worth reading before your agent asks you the awkward questions.

If your gearing position is part of your strategy, our negative gearing explainer covers how the loss works and where the policy is heading.

How does Kleev turn this into a read-off?

Every list above gives you the same instruction: find the year's relevant transactions and sort them into labelled groups. Kleev automates that part.

Import your bank statements (exporting the CSVs takes a few minutes per bank) and Kleev categorises the year. Work costs, hustle costs and property costs then show up on their own, rather than depending on your memory of last September.

The property statement grid lays your rental's year out like a spreadsheet, categories down the side and months across the top, with each cell traceable to a real transaction.

The EOFY tax pack then assembles the lot from your transactions, ready for your tax agent, with per-category deduction tables and a property schedule you can export to Excel in one click.

July becomes checking a document rather than building one. Get your year organised in Kleev →

Common questions

When is the tax return deadline in Australia?

31 October is the deadline if you lodge your own return through myTax. Registered tax agents have their own lodgment program that can extend well past that date, but you need to be on an agent's books before 31 October to use it. The ATO pre-fills most income data by late July, so lodging in the first half of July often means working from an incomplete picture.

Can I lodge my tax return after 31 October?

Only through a registered tax agent, and only if you engaged them before 31 October. Agents' lodgment programs give their existing clients later due dates depending on circumstances. If you miss 31 October without an agent, lodge as soon as possible anyway; penalties can apply, and lodging late beats not lodging.

What records do I need for a side hustle at tax time?

Records of every dollar of income (invoices, platform statements, payouts) and every expense you'll claim, apportioned between business and private use. The ATO receives data from banks and platforms, so declare income even where no one issued you a summary. Keep records for 5 years from when you lodge, and if your GST turnover reaches $75,000 you must register for GST.

Do I need a depreciation schedule for my investment property?

You don't legally need one, but without a quantity surveyor's depreciation schedule you generally can't claim capital works and depreciation deductions properly, and for many properties those run to thousands of dollars a year. It's a one-off document that keeps working every tax year, and its cost is itself deductible.

What documents does my tax agent need for a rental property?

The property manager's annual statement (rent received, fees, and costs paid on your behalf), loan statements showing interest separately from principal, your depreciation schedule, and receipts for rates, insurance, strata, repairs and any expense the agent didn't handle. If the property was rented for only part of the year or used privately, note the dates, because apportionment depends on them.