Recording your interest payments on the Airtax Tax Return

A very common source of income that you may have earned throughout the financial year is interest from holding money in a bank account. This is one of the many income types that the Airtax Tax Return is able to capture, so it’s important you utilise this section when completing your return. In this Help Centre article we’ll talk about what interest is, when it is necessary to complete this section, and how to correctly record interest earned during the financial year on Airtax.

What is interest income?

When you store money in a bank account (for example, a savings account or a term deposit), you earn a rate of interest. These interest payments that you receive from the bank are deemed to be income earned in your name, and are therefore reportable on your income tax return. Your bank may withhold some tax on these payments throughout the year, to account for some income tax liability you may end up owing on them when you lodge your tax return.

Is my interest information available through the Airtax ATO prefill?

Yes - when your tax return is connected with the ATO, you should see your interest income details already listed in the relevant section. 

What information is required in this section?

As mentioned above, this section should be prefilled when you arrive at your income page of the Airtax tax return. However if you proceed manually completing your tax return, there’s a few key pieces of information you need to list in the “interest” section:

1. The name of your bank that you received the interest amounts from
2. The total gross amount of interest you had received throughout the financial year
3. The amount of tax withheld on this interest income (if any) 

This information should be made available to you in a summary statement provided by your bank.

What you’ve learned:

• What interest income is
• How to account for it on the Airtax tax return