HECS

I haven't done my tax return for the past two years as I owe them money, yes yes silly I know. Due to getting a bonus at work each year it gets tacked onto my yearly income and so the ATO say 'ooooh you haven't paid enough HECS for what you have earnt' even though work takes out the correct amount based on my fortnightly income. Yes I should have done my tax returns, but I am doing them in the coming week or two, once I get the tax packs in the mail (I was going to pay someone but I think I can do it myself now after talking to the ATO today). I couldn't afford to pay back the debt so I just kept putting it off. I was going to use my bonus from last year to pay it but decided to buy Smurfy, my road bike, instead :D

I asked the guy from the ATO how much my outstanding HECS debt actually is, but because I haven't done my tax for 2 years (now almost 3) he could only give the amount from when I last did my tax. Idid some rough calculations on how much I may have paid off over the 2 years of non tax submission and after doing these sums I worked out that it would have been about 2/3 of it - SWEET! I figure that with the money I owed and using this years bonus to pay it off then I would have paid off all my HECS - FTW!!!

A few hours after working this out, I then came to the realisation that I hadn't actually considered the HECS payments my work has been taking out for the current financial year. Again a few quick sums I am pretty sure that I should have now paid off my entire HECS debt FTW!! How fricken awesome is that!!!

If I do 05 and 06 tax, then it will come back as me owing money and if I organise a payment plan or something and then do my 07 tax that will probably show that I have paid off the debt. I am not sure though if they will either say I still have the debt and then give me a refund for 07 or not, but either way I think I wont have to use this years bonus to pay off my tax debt and I can put it all on my CC or in the bank to save it for a rainy day or something.

I really didn't think that this week could get any better. Once it is actually sorted, I will need to stop paying my HECS, cos it is quite a substantial amount, and put it into my ING account where it can earn interest.

I think I need to go sit down with my dad in the next few weeks and try to sort everything out and put a plan in place for paying off existing debt while at the same time saving. If I can halve my CC and save a heap of cash, then in 12 months I could have enough for a deposit on a house.