Individuals and sole traders generally have 2 years to submit an amendment to their tax return. This time starts from the day after your notice of assessment is sent to you.
For example, if the date on your individual notice of assessment is 1 November 2023, your amendment period starts on 2 November 2023. That means you have until 1 November 2025 to request an amendment to your tax return.
Amendments are part of the self-assessment system. That is, we accept the information in your amendment at face value.
The law sets time limits for amending your tax assessment. Beyond this time, you may need to lodge an objection instead.
You'll need to lodge an objection if you want to:
- dispute the law
- dispute the facts we have used to come to a decision about your tax affairs (including your income tax assessment)
- lodge an amendment outside of the time limits.
While the time limit for lodging amendments and objections is the same, you can request an extension of time to lodge an objection in some circumstances.
You can submit more than one amendment request within a period of review.
The time limit gives you certainty about your tax affairs because it means we can't amend your tax assessment outside the time limit (except in some exceptional situations such as evasion or fraud).
If you are a business or super entity, see Time limits for business and super amendments.
Individuals and sole traders generally have 2 years to submit an amendment to their tax return.