The normal office hours are Monday to Friday 8:00 am to 5:30 pm. Appointments are necessary. Because we recognise that not everyone can find time during the workday to attend to their financial affairs, we also offer evening and Saturday afternoon appointments.

The fee for tax return preparation depends on the nature and complexity of the income and deductions involved. The fee for most basic individual returns (that is, a wage earner with interest income and some work-related tax deductions) will be approximately $165 (including GST).

Where you have a rental property or investment earnings (dividends/trust distributions/capital gains) then the fee will increase to recognise the additional work required to prepare the tax return. Once the return takes longer than an hour to prepare, we will charge a fee based on the time it takes to efficiently prepare the return. The tidier and more summarised the information is that you provide to us, the quicker your return will be to prepare.

Please refer to the Individual Tax Return Checklist and use it as a guide to the information that you need to provide.

All work, except for basic individual tax return preparation (see question 2), will be charged to you based on the time it takes to efficiently complete the task.

All fees paid to a registered tax agent, whether for the preparation of your tax return, tax advice or other tax-related matter will be deductible in the year in which the fees are paid. The cost of travelling to meet with your tax advisor to attend to your tax affairs will also be tax deductible.

You will only need to lodge your tax return by 31 October if you are preparing it yourself. If you appoint us as your tax agent before 31 October then you will benefit from the lodgment extensions that the tax office provides to registered tax agents.

If a return is lodged late the tax office has the discretion to assess a penalty amount, a general interest charge or both.

Tax returns have increased in complexity and length. We have provided an Individual Tax Return Checklist for you to use to ensure that you bring most of the basic items of information required to complete your return. If this is your first visit to us, please bring a copy of your prior year's tax return to assist us in ensuring that continuing deductions like depreciation are not forgotten.

We recommend that you do bring all your work and business related receipts with you at the time of your appointment for review or clarification if a deduction is in doubt. However, we also recommend that, in the interest of keeping the time spent preparing your return down and our fees low, you also have a summary list which totals your individual expenses. This can be handwritten, or a computer spreadsheet etc.

Written evidence used in the preparation of your tax return must be kept for a period of five years from the date of lodgment of your tax return.

No. Even though the tax office does not require you to have receipts to support claims totalling less than $300, you must still have incurred the expense in relation to earning your income. If asked by the tax office you must be able to show how you worked out your claim and why it is reasonable given the nature of your occupation.

For expenses of less than $10 each (up to a total of $200 for the year), you can keep your own record of each cost as written evidence of the expense. Your record of each expense should include all the information that would have appeared on a receipt had you received one. That is date of purchase, amount of purchase, name of the supplier, description of item purchased.

A log book is only valid for five years. A new log book must be kept for each five year period if you want to continue making car claims using this method. Be aware that a new log book must be kept if you change employer, change your role with your current employer, or the pattern of your work-related travel charges.

The records used to prepare your tax return must be kept for at least 5 years from the date your tax return is lodged. If you carry forward a tax loss, you must keep the records for five years after the year the tax return in which the loss is fully deducted, is lodged. If you own an asset which will be subject to capital gains tax on disposal, you will need to keep records covering the entire period of ownership until 5 years after lodgment of the tax return recording the disposal of the asset.