At last year’s Federal Budget, Swanny managed to sneak a little adjustment through the system that didn’t get a whole lot of coverage at the time.
For the last few years, the medical expenses tax offset has offered a rebate (20% for 2010) of the excess amount over a threshold of $1,500. This meant that spending $2,200 on qualified meds (after subtracting anything that you received from Medicare, or your Private Health Fund) for you and the kids would give you an extra $140 in your pocket come tax time. Not a massive rebate, but hey, we’ll take what we can get.
For this current 2011 year though, the threshold has now jumped up to $2,000 before you’ll get anything back from the tax system. Bastards. Putting some numbers on that; it means that the first $100 of the medical rebate has just gone up in smoke.
Still, should the proverbial really hit the fan, it’s nice to know that there’s still “something” to come back to you at tax time. So if it looks like you might be getting close to that $2,000 figure as a family then it might be worth thinking about loading up on anything else that you were going to need soon enough, anyway. New glasses or a little non-cosmetic dental work, for example.
Just quietly though, we’ll be hoping that none of our clients have need to claim this one, anyway!