# Tax Office pays interest for some early payments of tax



## Jack Malarkey (Jan 11, 2016)

In some cases, the Tax Office does pay interest if you pay early but early payment of GST isn't one of them. However, early payment of your annual income tax bill is. Early payments via PAYG don't count.

You need to pay no later than 15 days before the due date to receive the interest. The early payment cannot exceed the actual amount you owe.

Getting paid the interest is a little bit fiddly as you need to calculate it and then claim it via a tax return. (This means you have a very long wait until you actually benefit from the interest.) The Tax Office has an on line calculator for this purpose.

The interest paid is itself assessable income.

The interest rate is not high: it varies from quarter to quarter but for the quarter ended 30 June 2017 it was 1.78%.

I understand that the total amount of interest that the Tax Office pays each year for early payments of tax is only about $50,000. Hardly anyone even knows that this entitlement exists.

For more information, please see https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/...of-tax-2017/?page=5#What_is_an_early_payment_.

For more information about the rate at which the interest is paid, please see https://www.ato.gov.au/Forms/Interest-on-early-payments-and-overpayments-of-tax-2017/?page=3.

For the calculator, please see https://www.ato.gov.au/calculators-...nterest/questions#CreditForInterest/questions.


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## Who is John Galt? (Sep 28, 2016)

Interesting.......are they prepared to pay cash?


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## UberDriverAU (Nov 4, 2015)

Who is John Galt? said:


> Interesting.......are they prepared to pay cash?


Because then you could hide the payment from the ATO??


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## Who is John Galt? (Sep 28, 2016)

UberDriverAU said:


> Because then you could hide the payment from the ATO??


LOL.  Are you American?


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