How to claim and fill out the educational tax refund from the tax department.

We have all heard about the new Educational tax refund that the Australian government is offering but how do you claim?

Obviously the first thing you must do if you want to claim expenses with the education tax rebate is to keep receipts of all your eligible purchases. Then at tax time, parents can simply claim the refund when they complete their 2008-09 income tax return.

Here is screenshot from a tax return for individuals for 2009. The education tax refund section will be located under the heading of tax offsets. After you have calculated your claim amount you can enter it into the L section shown below.

You can download a copy of this form from the Australian tax department. Tax return for individuals 2009

What time period can you claim for?

You can start keeping receipts for eligible incurred expenses from July 1st 2008.

What form do I fill out to claim to education tax rebate when I am not lodging a tax return

You can still claim the education tax refund even though you are not going to lodge a tax return.  Of course as long as you are eligible for this refund, you simply fill out a form and either send it to the ATO or drop it into one of their shop fronts.

Download the ETR claim form

How do you calculate your education tax refund?

Well this is something that everyone wants to know. It may look easy from the outset, but believe me it can get very difficult.  I found this Education Tax Refund calculator on the ATO website. You would think that working out 50% of something was easy, but in this case its not. For example what if your child was in primary school in 2008 and secondary school in 2009? You would have to do two separate calculations by splitting the amount of days spent at each school.

E-tax online

If you use E-tax to do your tax return online it is so easy to fill in the education tax refund section. You will not have to calculate anything at all. You just fill in the details required, which is not much at all, and then it will be calculated for you. It even calculates what amount you can rollover to the next year. I was shocked at how easy it was.

Tagged as: Bonus, Grants, Kevin Rudd, tax refund

This post was written by...

Mitz – who has written 151 posts on FY Money Box.

I am a blogger living the internet marketing life. I started out with one website as a hobby and now have over 20. I see the potential to make money from everything I set eyes on but what is the point of making money if you do not know how to manage it? We can learn about money together!

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