Getting Your Tax Records Right Before 30 June: The Complete 2026 EOFY Records Guide

Reference ID: 2605H01 By Mark Walmsley — Chartered Accountant | Registered Tax Agent | TPB 25498770

Tax records. Two words guaranteed to make any sensible Australian quietly close the laptop and put the kettle on. We get it. Records are the homework of the financial year — the bit nobody volunteers to do and everybody pays for in June.

Here is the good news. You do not need to be a bookkeeper, a spreadsheet hero, or a person who actually enjoys filing things to get your records right before 30 June. You need a clear list of what to keep, a sensible way to keep it, and roughly thirty days of small, deliberate effort. That is what this guide gives you.

It is written for three audiences in one place — PAYG employees, sole traders and ABN holders, and Australians with rental properties, shares or crypto. Wherever you sit on that spectrum, the principle is the same: the ATO will give you every deduction you can prove, and almost none that you cannot. Records are the proof.

This is the Hub for our May 2026 records cluster. Every linked Spoke and Snippet beneath it goes deeper on a specific area. If you only read one piece this month, this is the one.

Why records matter more in 2026 than they used to

The ATO has been increasingly pointed about record-keeping over the last few years, and 2026 is no exception. Working-from-home claims, motor vehicle deductions, and self-education expenses sit at the top of the audit-attention list. The pattern is consistent: the ATO is no longer accepting estimates, round numbers, or “I usually spend about $1,200 a year on…” style figures. They want contemporaneous evidence — meaning you wrote the record at or near the time the expense happened, not in October when you finally sat down to do your return.

There is a structural reason for this. Data-matching has become extraordinarily good. The ATO now cross-references your return against bank data, employer reporting, share registries, rideshare and gig-platform feeds, real estate agent reports, crypto exchange data, and a growing list of third-party sources. If your claimed deduction does not line up with the data the ATO already holds, you will hear about it.

The point is not to scare you. The point is that the cost-benefit of good records has shifted. Five years ago, sloppy records meant a smaller refund. In 2026, sloppy records can mean a denied deduction, a follow-up letter, and in some cases a penalty. Doing the work in May and June is genuinely the cheapest hour-for-hour you will spend on your tax all year.

The five-year rule (and the exceptions everyone forgets)

The headline rule is simple. You must keep your tax records for five years from the date you lodge your return. So if you lodge your 2025–26 return in October 2026, you keep those records until October 2031. Throw them out earlier and you have no defence if the ATO comes asking.

Three exceptions matter:

Depreciating assets. If you bought a laptop, a vehicle, or a tool that you are claiming over multiple years, you keep the records for five years after the asset is fully depreciated or sold. A laptop you depreciate over three years means records are kept for the three years of depreciation plus five more.

Capital gains records. If you bought shares, a rental property, or any asset that may eventually trigger a capital gain or loss, you keep the purchase records for five years after you eventually sell. Buy in 2018, sell in 2030, keep until 2035. Yes, that means some records live for over a decade.

Disputes and amendments. If you are in dispute with the ATO, or you have lodged an amendment, the clock can reset. Keep everything until the matter is fully closed.

The rule of thumb: when in doubt, do not throw it out. Digital storage costs nothing. The ten-year-old receipt that nobody can find is what tax disputes are made of.

What actually counts as a valid record

The ATO is not fussy about format. They are extremely fussy about content. A valid record needs to show, at minimum, four things:

• What the expense was for
• When it was incurred
• How much it was
• Who was paid (the supplier)

A receipt with all four is gold. A bank statement showing only “EFTPOS — OFFICEWORKS — $87.40” technically satisfies amount, date, and supplier, but does not on its own tell the ATO what you bought. That is a problem if Officeworks sells both deductible items (a printer cartridge for work) and non-deductible items (snacks for the kids).

The fix is simple. Either keep the itemised receipt — paper or photo — or make a contemporaneous note explaining the purpose. A photo of the receipt with the time and date stamp the phone applies automatically is generally accepted. Photo of receipts plus a quick categorisation tag is the modern minimum standard.

Specific record types the ATO accepts:

• Original or scanned receipts and tax invoices
• Bank and credit card statements (supplemented by purpose where needed)
• Logbooks (vehicle, home office hours)
• Invoices issued and paid (for ABN holders)
• Travel diaries for work travel of six or more nights
• Calendar entries showing dates and locations of work activity
• Salary slips, payment summaries, and STP income statements
• Settlement statements, contract notes, and exchange transaction histories

What is not accepted: estimates, round-figure assumptions (“I drove about 5,000 km last year”), credit card statements without context, photos of receipts that are too blurry to read, and “the dog ate it.”

Records for PAYG employees

If you earn a wage or salary and your employer puts you through Single Touch Payroll, the income side of your return is largely automatic. The records that decide your refund size are the ones supporting your deductions.

Work-related expenses generally

The general rule for work-related expenses: you must have spent the money yourself, not been reimbursed, and the expense must directly relate to earning your income. You also need a record. The ATO’s long-standing $300 threshold still applies — if your total work-related expense claims for the year are under $300, you do not need written evidence for each item. The moment you go over $300, every item needs to be substantiated.

In practice, most working Australians cross $300 easily once you add up uniforms, tools, a small piece of equipment, and a few professional subscriptions. Assume the threshold does not apply to you and keep everything.

Motor vehicle and travel

If you claim car expenses, two methods are available — cents per kilometre, or logbook. Cents per kilometre lets you claim up to a capped number of kilometres at a set rate, with no logbook, but you still need a reasonable basis for the kilometres claimed. “5,000 km because that is the cap” is not a reasonable basis on its own.

The logbook method requires a 12-week continuous logbook of all car use, which establishes a business-use percentage that is then valid for five years (provided your usage pattern does not materially change). Keep the logbook itself, plus all car running cost records — fuel, rego, insurance, servicing, tyres, depreciation. The Spoke piece in this cluster covers car records in detail (see 2605SP02).

For non-car work travel — flights, hotels, taxis, public transport — you need the booking confirmation, the receipt, and, for trips of six or more consecutive nights, a travel diary showing what you did each day.

Working from home

WFH records are an audit hot zone. Whichever method you use — fixed rate per hour or actual cost — you must keep contemporaneous records of the hours worked from home. A spreadsheet or app log is fine. Diary entries are fine. Estimates after the fact are not.

If you use the fixed rate, you also need at least one bill in your name for each running cost the rate covers (electricity, gas, internet, mobile). If you use actual cost, you need every bill, plus a way to apportion business versus private use. We cover the methods exhaustively in the Cluster 2 Hub (see 2605H02).

Self-education

If you study something directly connected to your current income-earning work, the course fees, textbooks, stationery, and travel to and from study can be deductible. Records to keep: course enrolment confirmation, fee receipts, book receipts, and a study schedule that demonstrates the connection to your work. If the course leads to a different career rather than enhances your current one, the deduction generally does not apply — and the records will not save it.

Tools, equipment and subscriptions

For any tool, piece of equipment, or work-related subscription:

• Under $300 each: immediate deduction, keep the receipt.
• Over $300 each: depreciated over the asset’s useful life, keep the receipt for the full depreciation period plus five years.
• Subscriptions: keep the receipt and a note of the work connection (a journalist’s news subscription, a tradesperson’s industry magazine, a software developer’s GitHub Pro account).

Union and professional association fees are deductible. Keep the annual membership renewal notice or receipt.

Uniforms, protective gear and laundry

If your employer requires a compulsory uniform with a registered design, or you wear protective clothing for work (steel caps, sun protection for outdoor workers, lab coats, hi-vis), the purchase cost and the laundry cost are deductible. Records to keep: receipts for every clothing item, and either receipts for laundry costs or a reasonable diary record if you laundered the uniform at home. The standard rule of thumb the ATO accepts for home laundry is a per-load amount, but you still need a record of how many loads — a four-week pattern that you reasonably extrapolate is generally fine.

Conventional clothing — even clothing your employer requires you to wear, like a suit or a corporate dress code — is not deductible. The line is: if you can wear it to a barbecue, the ATO will not let you claim it.

Donations and gifts

Donations to deductible gift recipients are claimable, but only if the receipt comes from a registered DGR. Keep the receipt — the digital one in your inbox is fine — and check the organisation’s DGR status if you are not sure. Workplace giving deductions handled through payroll appear on your STP income statement and do not need separate receipts.

Personal super contributions

If you are making personal contributions to your super fund and intending to claim them as a deduction, you must lodge a Notice of Intent to Claim with your super fund and have it acknowledged before you lodge your tax return. Records to keep: the contribution statements from your fund, the lodged Notice of Intent, and the fund’s acknowledgment. Without the acknowledgment, the deduction does not stand — this is one of the more common, and more painful, records mistakes we see.

Records for sole traders, contractors and ABN holders

Running on an ABN raises the records bar — significantly. You are now responsible for both the income and the expense side of the equation, and the ATO expects business-grade evidence. The full deep dive is in the Pillar piece (see 2605P01); below is the EOFY records short list.

Business income

Every dollar of business income needs to be traceable. That means:

• Invoices issued, with sequential numbering, your ABN, the recipient’s details, and the GST treatment if you are registered for GST.
• A reconciliation between your invoices and what was actually paid into your bank account.
• Records of any cash payments, with the date, payer, amount, and what it was for.
• Platform statements if you earn through Uber, DoorDash, Airtasker, Etsy, an app store, or any digital marketplace.

If you earn through a platform, the platform almost certainly reports your earnings to the ATO. Your records and the platform’s records need to match.

Business expenses

You can deduct any expense incurred in earning your business income, with the same evidence requirements as employees but with a much wider set of categories. EOFY records to gather:

• Tax invoices for every business expense (suppliers, contractors, software, raw materials)
• Bank statements with each business expense identifiable
• Credit card statements for any business-card spend
• Asset purchase records (anything you depreciate)
• Loan statements if you borrowed to fund the business

GST and BAS

If you are registered for GST, your BAS records are part of your tax records. Keep all lodged BAS statements, the working papers behind them, and any adjustments. Mismatched BAS and income tax return numbers are one of the easier audit triggers to avoid — they should reconcile cleanly.

Asset register and depreciation

Anything you bought for the business that costs more than the immediate-deduction threshold needs to sit on an asset register. The register should record: what was bought, when, for how much, the depreciation method and effective life applied, and accumulated depreciation to date. This becomes capital gains evidence if you ever sell, retire, or scrap the asset.

Home-based business records

If you run the business from home, occupancy expenses (a portion of rent, mortgage interest, rates, insurance) can be deductible — but the records bar is high, and there are capital gains tax implications when you eventually sell the home. Records to keep: floor-plan with the business-use area, the percentage of total floor area, photos of the dedicated work space, and copies of every household bill. The Cluster 2 Pillar covers home-based business WFH in detail (see 2605P02).

Records for investors

Investment income and capital gains records have their own quirks because they live across decades, not financial years.

Rental property

If you own one or more rental properties, you should have ready access to:

• The original purchase contract, settlement statement, and any acquisition costs (legal fees, stamp duty, building inspection)
• The current loan statements showing interest paid
• Annual statements from the property manager
• Receipts for every repair, every improvement, and every recurring cost (rates, insurance, body corporate, water)
• A depreciation schedule prepared by a quantity surveyor (highly recommended for any property less than about 40 years old)
• Records of any periods the property was unavailable for rent, and the reason

The distinction between repairs (immediately deductible) and improvements (capital, depreciated) is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes in rental returns. The records make it possible to defend the call you made.

Shares and managed funds

For each parcel of shares or units:

• The contract note showing the purchase date, price, and any brokerage
• Dividend statements (now mostly delivered through share registries online)
• Reinvestment notices for any dividend reinvestment plan
• The eventual sale contract note, with the sale date and price

CGT records live for the life of the asset plus five more years after sale. Keep them indefinitely unless you have a specific reason not to.

Crypto

The ATO treats crypto as a capital asset for most retail holders. Records to keep:

• Every transaction history file from every exchange and wallet you have used
• The Australian dollar value at the time of each transaction
• Cost-base details for each parcel acquired
• A clean record of any crypto-to-crypto trades, which are CGT events even if no AUD ever moved

Crypto records are notoriously hard to reconstruct after the fact. Pull them now, label them by tax year, and store them in a way that survives an exchange shutting down.

Digital records — what the ATO actually accepts

Paper is dying. The ATO has been comfortable with electronic records for years now, provided the records are complete, accurate, easily retrievable, and stored securely.

What that means in practice:

• A clear photo of a receipt is acceptable.
• A scanned PDF of a receipt is acceptable.
• A logbook kept in an app is acceptable, provided the app captures contemporaneous entries.
• Cloud backup is acceptable — and strongly preferable to keeping records only on a single device that can be lost or stolen.
• A receipt that has faded into illegibility on the original thermal paper is not acceptable. Take the photo the day you get it.

The thing the ATO cares about is integrity — the record was made at the time, has not been altered, and can be produced if requested. The medium is up to you.

Common records mistakes that cost real money

Over thirty-two years of tax practice, the same records mistakes keep showing up. Here are the ones that cost Australian taxpayers the most.

Estimating instead of recording. “I drive about this many kilometres a week, I work from home about that many hours, I spent about a thousand on tools.” Estimates are not records. They will not survive an ATO query. They have not survived for some years now.

Bank statements as the only evidence. A line item on a bank statement is part of a record, but rarely the whole record. The ATO needs to see what was bought, not just that money moved.

Faded thermal-paper receipts. The little roll receipts every retailer prints fade to nothing within twelve months. Photograph or scan them the day you get them.

Forgetting the small recurring stuff. Streaming subscriptions for journalists, app store fees for developers, monthly tool subscriptions for tradies — small individual amounts that add up to real deductions over a year, frequently missed because each individual receipt feels too trivial to keep.

Double-dipping on WFH. Claiming the fixed rate per hour and a separate claim for phone and internet on top. The fixed rate is designed to cover those costs; claiming them again is the single most common WFH mistake the ATO flags.

Losing the depreciation schedule. A quantity surveyor depreciation schedule for a rental property is a one-off cost that pays itself back many times over — but only if you can find it when the return is lodged. File it where you will not lose it.

Mixing personal and business on one card. ABN holders who run business expenses and grocery shops through the same card create a reconciliation nightmare. Get a separate card the day you start trading on the ABN.

Throwing out records too early. Five years from lodgement, not five years from the date on the receipt. Most people get this wrong.

What to do if you have already lost records

Sometimes the records are gone. The receipt was on the back seat of the car that got rained on. The ex took the filing cabinet. The phone with the photos went swimming.

You are not without options. The ATO accepts reasonable reconstruction in most categories, provided you can demonstrate the expense was incurred and was directly connected to your income. Steps to reconstruct:

• Pull the bank or credit card statement covering the period and identify the transaction
• Email the supplier and ask for a copy of the tax invoice — most retailers can pull a duplicate from their loyalty system if you have an account
• Check your email — most digital purchases generate a receipt that lives in your inbox forever
• For recurring subscriptions, log into the provider and download the billing history
• For WFH hours, reconstruct from your work calendar, Slack or Teams activity, and email patterns

Reconstructed records are not as strong as contemporaneous records, but they are far better than nothing — and they are vastly better than dropping the deduction entirely. If you are unsure whether a reconstructed record will hold up, the answer is to either get the deduction reviewed by a registered tax agent before lodgement, or to drop the contested portion and keep the rest.

The Deduction Grabber: stop herding receipts in shoeboxes

Most Australians are bad at records for the same reason they are bad at flossing — not because the task is hard, but because there is no easy moment to do it.

This is exactly the problem D.E.R.E.K., our AI assistant, and the GoTax Deduction Grabber were built to solve. The Deduction Grabber is a free record-keeping app: snap a photo of any receipt, tag what it was for, and the record sits in your account waiting until tax time. When you lodge your return through GoTax, those records flow straight in. No shoebox. No frantic October weekend. No “I know I bought that thing in November but where is the receipt.”

It is not a clever sales pitch. It is the simplest practical answer to the records problem we have, and the one we recommend whether you lodge with us or not. Get the receipts off the floor of the car and into something that will not lose them.

Your 30-day EOFY records plan

Five weeks of small, deliberate work and you are sorted. Run this plan from late May to 30 June.

Week one — gather. Pick a single home for your tax records this year. Could be the Deduction Grabber, could be a folder in your cloud drive, could be a physical folder. One home, not seven. Pull together everything you already have — receipts in your wallet, expense statements in your email, last year’s records you have not filed.

Week two — categorise. Sort by category: motor vehicle, work-related, WFH, self-education, equipment, donations, investment, business. If you do not know where something belongs, put it in a “to check” pile and move on.

Week three — fill the gaps. Look for what is missing. Did you buy a piece of equipment in October that you have not got a receipt for? Email the supplier now. Lost a fuel receipt? Pull it from the bank statement and add a note. Missing a quarter of WFH hours? Reconstruct what you can from your calendar.

Week four — log final WFH hours and finalise. Record the last few weeks of WFH hours. Bring the vehicle logbook up to date if you are using one. Confirm every income source has a record. Photograph any paper receipts that have not been scanned yet.

Week five (last week of June) — close the year. Make sure 30 June bills, employer reporting, dividend statements, and platform statements are all accounted for. Back up the records. You are now in a position to lodge as soon as your STP income statement is finalised.

Thirty days. Done well, this is the difference between a defensible return and a guess.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to keep paper records, or are digital fine? Digital is fine. The ATO accepts photos and scans, provided they are clear, complete, and retained for the full retention period.

How long do I have to keep tax records? Five years from the date you lodge the return — with longer periods for depreciating assets, capital gains records, and any matter in dispute.

What records do I need for working from home in 2026? At minimum, a contemporaneous record of WFH hours and a bill in your name for each running cost. The fixed-rate method and actual-cost method have different specifics — see the WFH Hub (2605H02).

Can I claim a deduction without a receipt? Generally no. Below the $300 total work-related expenses threshold, written evidence is not required for each individual item. Above that, every item needs evidence.

Do I need a logbook for my car? Only if you use the logbook method. The cents-per-kilometre method does not require a logbook, but it does require a reasonable basis for the kilometres claimed. The vehicle records Spoke (2605SP02) covers both in detail.

What records do I need for a rental property? Original purchase documents, settlement statement, current loan statements, agent statements, repair and improvement invoices, depreciation schedule, and rates / insurance / body corporate records.

The ATO already has a lot of my income data — do I still need records? Yes. The ATO holds your income data through Single Touch Payroll, share registries, and similar sources. They do not hold your deduction data. That is the part you are responsible for evidencing.

How GoTax helps you finish the job

When you lodge through GoTax, our system walks you through every deduction category that applies to your situation — with prompts, examples, and a record check at every step. If something is missing or looks inconsistent, D.E.R.E.K. will flag it before you lodge. Behind D.E.R.E.K. sit our registered tax agents, who review every return before it is filed.

Two prices: lodge a Quick Tax Return from $25, or do a Full Tax Return when your situation is more involved. Sole traders and ABN holders should head to ABN Tax Return. Investors with a rental property can lodge through Rental Property Tax Returns. And if you want a quick refund estimate before you start, run the numbers through the GoTax tax calculator.

For broader background on the topics covered here, our Tax Tips library and the GoTax Key Content Index are the next places to go. For deeper coverage of any specific records area, the linked Pillars and Spokes in this May cluster will take you the rest of the way.

Records are unglamorous. They are also what separates the taxpayers who keep their refund from the ones who hand it back when the ATO asks. Spend the thirty days. You will be glad you did.

About the author

Mark Walmsley is a Chartered Accountant and Registered Tax Agent with thirty-two years of Australian tax practice experience. He is the principal author of GoTax tax content and the Registered Tax Agent responsible for every return lodged through the GoTax platform. Mark holds a Bachelor of Business (Accountancy) and a Graduate Diploma of Taxation, and is registered with the Tax Practitioners Board under registration number 25498770. Read more about Mark and the GoTax team at About GoTax.

This content is general in nature. Individual tax circumstances vary — contact GoTax or a registered tax agent for advice specific to your situation. ATO references should be checked against the current ATO guidance at the time you read this. External link: ATO — keeping your tax records.