Sole traders: more of your return is filled in for you this year
From Tax Time 2026, the ATO pre-fills more of a sole trader's return — including government grants, payments reported through TPAR, your ABN and opening stock. Useful, but it does not mean it's right.
If you are a sole trader, you will notice something different this tax time: more of your return arrives already filled in.
What is now pre-filled
From Tax Time 2026, the ATO pre-fills additional information into a sole trader’s return, including:
- assessable payments you received — including government grants, and payments reported about you through the Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR)
- your ABN
- the value of your opening stock, if you carry any
That last one is genuinely handy if you have ever had to dig back through last year’s paperwork to find it.
The catch worth understanding
Pre-filled does not mean verified. Pre-filling tells you what someone else reported about you. It does not know whether that figure is complete, whether it belongs in this financial year, or whether part of it was a reimbursement rather than income.
The two we see go wrong most often:
- TPAR-reported payments that include amounts you invoiced but were paid in a different year. The reporting business’s timing and yours do not always line up.
- Grants treated as straight income when part of the arrangement was something else entirely.
If a pre-filled number does not match your own records, your records are the starting point for the conversation — not the pre-fill.
One more change worth knowing
Separately, if your business has an aggregated turnover under $50 million, you now have up to four years from the date of your assessment to request an amendment. That applies to 2024–25 assessments onwards. In practice it means a mistake found late is more often fixable than it used to be.
Not sure whether a pre-filled figure is right? Send us your own records and we will reconcile them — 02 4017 0160 or info@vipaccounting.com.au.