Tax Return Checklist for Investors in Australia (2026): What to Give Your Accountant

By Mitchell Shad  ·  28 September 2026  ·  10 min read

If you own anything beyond a salary and a bank account, tax time stops being a ten-minute myTax job. A rental property, a share portfolio, a few ETFs, some crypto or a family trust each add their own paperwork, and the accountant can only claim what you can show them. This is the complete list, organised by what you own, so you can hand it over once instead of answering emails for three weeks.

The short answer: for the 2025–26 year (1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026), an investor needs to give their accountant: every asset sold during the year with its purchase date, cost base and sale proceeds; rent received and every rental expense, property by property; dividend and distribution statements including franking credits; ETF and managed fund annual tax statements; interest earned and interest paid on investment loans; and a separate set of the same for any trust, company or SMSF. If you lodge yourself, the deadline is 31 October 2026. If you use a tax agent, you need to be on their books before 31 October to get their later deadline.

When is the 2026 tax return due?

The line that catches people out is the second one. The later agent deadline is not automatic: if you have never used an accountant, or you are changing accountants, contact them before 31 October.

Before you start: the one rule that saves the most time

Keep everything per entity. Assets held in your own name, jointly, in a family trust, in a company and in a self-managed super fund are reported on different returns. A dividend statement or a property cost filed under the wrong owner is the most common reason an accountant has to come back to you. Sort first, then collect.

Shares and ETFs

For every share or ETF you sold during the year:

• The purchase date and sale date (the trade dates on the contract notes, not the settlement dates)
• The cost base: the purchase price plus brokerage on the way in
• The sale proceeds, less brokerage on the way out
• Which parcel you sold, if you bought the same holding more than once

For everything you held:

• Dividend statements for every payment, showing the franked amount, the unfranked amount and the franking credits. Franking credits are added to your income and then offset against your tax, and for an individual they can be refunded if they exceed the tax you owe.
• If you are on a dividend reinvestment plan, the reinvested dividend is still income, and each reinvestment is a new parcel with its own cost base. Keep the statements; you will need them when you eventually sell.
• ETF and managed fund annual tax statements (often called an AMMA or annual tax statement). These arrive late, often in August or September, and they matter: they break a distribution into its tax components and include cost base adjustments that change your gain when you sell. Without them your accountant is guessing.

How capital gains work in Australia

A capital gain is the sale proceeds less the cost base. The rules that change what you pay:

• The CGT discount. If an individual or a trust held the asset for more than 12 months, only half the gain is taxed. For an SMSF the discount is one third. Companies get no discount. The 12 months is counted from the contract date of purchase to the contract date of sale, so a sale a week early can double the taxable gain.
• Capital losses are subtracted from capital gains before the discount is applied. They cannot be used against your salary, but an unused loss is carried forward to future years with no time limit, so tell your accountant about losses from earlier years too.
• The gain is taxed at your marginal rate. There is no separate capital gains tax rate in Australia; the taxable gain is simply added to your income.

Crypto

The ATO treats crypto as a CGT asset. Every disposal is a CGT event, and that includes swapping one coin for another, not just selling for dollars. For the year you need:

• Every trade, swap and sale with the date, the amount and the Australian dollar value on both sides
• The cost base of what was disposed of
• Any staking or interest rewards, which are generally income when received

Most exchanges produce an annual report. If you use more than one exchange, or move coins between wallets, the records need joining up, and that is where a dedicated crypto tax tool or a crypto-literate accountant earns its keep.

Rental property

This is where most money is left on the table, because every legitimate deduction needs a record and most of them arrive on different bills at different times of year. The summary is below; rental property tax deductions in Australia has the complete list. For each property:

Income

• Rent received, usually from the property manager's annual statement
• Any other income: bond money kept for damage, insurance payouts for lost rent, fees charged to tenants

Expenses you can generally claim in the year

• Interest on the loan used to buy the property (the loan statement; interest only, not principal)
• Council rates and water charges
• Land tax
• Landlord insurance and building insurance
• Strata or body corporate fees (the admin and sinking fund levies; a special levy for improvements is usually treated differently)
• Property management fees, letting fees and advertising for tenants
• Repairs and maintenance that restore something to its original condition
• Pest control, gardening, cleaning between tenancies, smoke alarm servicing
• Bank fees on the investment loan

Expenses claimed over time

• Borrowing costs (loan establishment fees, mortgage registration, lenders mortgage insurance) are generally spread over five years, or the term of the loan if shorter.
• Capital works (the building itself and structural improvements) are generally deducted at 2.5% a year for residential property built after September 1987.
• Depreciating assets such as carpets, blinds and appliances are claimed over their effective life. If you bought a previously lived-in residential property after 9 May 2017, you generally cannot claim depreciation on the assets that came with it. A quantity surveyor's depreciation schedule is the document your accountant wants here.

What you generally cannot claim

• Travel to inspect or maintain a residential rental property (not deductible since 1 July 2017)
• Repairs that fix damage that existed when you bought the property; these are capital costs, added to the cost base
• Improvements, as opposed to repairs, in the year they are done
• The principal portion of your loan repayments

If the property was only rented for part of the year, or used by family at below-market rent, tell your accountant: the deductions are apportioned.

Did you buy or sell a property this year? Your accountant needs the contract and the settlement statement. On a purchase they set up the cost base and the borrowing costs. On a sale they calculate the capital gain, and the contract date, not settlement, decides which financial year the gain falls in.

The ATO asks you to keep rental records for five years from when you lodge the return. Don't send them in; keep them in case they ask.

Interest and cash

• Interest earned on every savings account and term deposit (the ATO pre-fills most of it, but check it matches)
• Interest paid on any loan used to invest, including a margin loan against shares
• If an offset account sits against an investment loan, note it: the interest you didn't pay isn't deductible, but the mix of personal and investment use in a single loan is something your accountant will ask about

Trusts, companies and SMSFs

Every entity is its own return, and each needs everything above for the assets it holds. On top of that:

• Family trusts: the trustee's distribution resolution, which generally has to be made by 30 June for the year's income. If it wasn't, tell your accountant now, not in April.
• Companies: the financial statements, and any loans between you and the company, which have their own rules.
• SMSFs: the fund's bank statements, investment statements and contributions records, which also go to the fund's approved auditor before the annual return is lodged.

The one-page checklist

Before you contact your accountant, you should be able to tick all of these, for each entity you own:

1. A list of every asset sold, with purchase date, cost base, sale date and proceeds
2. Dividend statements with franking credits, for every holding
3. ETF and managed fund annual tax statements
4. Crypto trading history for every exchange and wallet
5. For each rental property: rent received, and every expense on the lists above
6. Loan statements showing interest paid on investment borrowing
7. Interest earned on cash
8. Contracts and settlement statements for any property bought or sold
9. The depreciation schedule for each rental property
10. Trust distribution resolutions, and SMSF records for the auditor

If some of this is missing, send what you have and say what's outstanding. A partial file sent in September is worth more to an accountant than a perfect one sent in March.

Why this is hard every single year

None of these documents is hard to get on its own. The difficulty is that they arrive from a dozen places over twelve months: contract notes from the broker, statements from the property manager, rates notices from the council, dividend statements from share registries, tax statements from ETF issuers, loan statements from the bank. By July, the figures that tell the story of your year are scattered across an inbox, a filing cabinet and a banking app.

The fix is to capture them as the year happens, against the asset they belong to. That's how Compound works: the trades you record (or forward as broker contract notes) already carry their cost base and dates; each rental property carries its rent and its costs; dividends and interest sit against the entity that received them. At tax time it turns all of that into one report per entity to hand to your accountant. It is a record of your own figures, not tax advice, and it doesn't replace the accountant. It means you send them the whole year in one go.

For the tracking side of it, how to track shares and ETFs in Australia covers the portfolio records that make the capital gains section easy.

This is general information only, not tax advice. Tax rules have detail and exceptions that depend on your circumstances; check your situation with a registered tax agent. Sources: Australian Taxation Office, lodgment dates for 2025–26 returns; ATO Rental properties guide (rental income, deductions, borrowing expenses, capital works and depreciating assets, and record keeping); ATO guidance on capital gains tax, the CGT discount and capital losses; ATO guidance on crypto asset transactions; ATO guidance on franking credits.