Ongoing tax calculator/monitor spreadsheet?

[saiman]

Hello,

Just wondering if anybody uses a spreadsheet or a program that will calculate your tax return/tax owed if you enter/update your income, property, expenses, depreciation, interest etc for your PAYG and properties? I would like the program or spreadsheet to be flexible so that I can update details on an ongoing basis and calculate accordingly....e.g if I put in $500 of expenses for property 1, it will update my current tax return at the bottom for the financial year....

This is helpful to me as I would like to control maintenance work for my properties to be allocated to expensive licensed tradies or cheap cash in hand handymen based on the possibility of claiming expenses back....also helps me see if it will be financially viable to do some renos towards the end of financial year if I have a bit left to claim

Many Thanks

Simon

 

[Paul@PFI]

If they are like anything any client has ever given me you dont want it. They end up riddled with complexity / errors / unncessary issues. Bad inputs = bad outputs. eg : Will it handle the 30/20/10/0% private health offset ? You wouldnt believe how many clients have told me I calc their refund incorrectly cause they built a DIY tax calculator that didnt work. Or put another way I have never seen anyone do one that is correct for all possibilities. Even ATO software gots it wrong with low income tax offset for 2 years !!

I would recommend you summarise based on tax return fields and allow totals to feed from seperate sumamries. ie Summary of monthly agents stmts + personally paid outgoings etc...Allow for non-deductible, depreciation, cap allowances etc.

 

[ramblin]

I think its best to build one from scratch that suits you. I have one that does what you say (gives me a final refund number) but like Paul said, mine won't suit others because I didn't bother building a lot of the tax issues into it...offsets, HECS etc.

Basically though I set up an individual sheet for each property, then a combined sheet that adds them together and feeds through to my overall tax position. I set them up from a budgeted perspective and then just overwrite them with actuals as each month passes. It is very handy to have as I know what my refund is going to look like at any given time.