There is concern that some taxpayers have yet to receive their refunds, despite having lodged their 2010 income tax return with the Australian Taxation Office in July.

Whilst “there have been a significant number and amount of refunds issued, there does remain a number of returns still going through the processing and verification actions.  This is normal during this period every financial year. It should be remembered these verifications may be for a variety of reasons”.

“Processing returns did not start straight away, because we had to test the new software installed for the 2010-2011 year”.  Processing did not start until 9 July 2010.

“There had been delays with the processing of returns for taxpayers who have Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) and Student Financial Supplement Scheme (SFSS) obligations”.

Another problem has been the mistakes of employers including incorrect amounts of reportable superannuation contributions on PAYG summaries.

This comes on top of the dismal performance by the Tax Office of 2009 tax return processing after 1st January 2010.

Whilst most refunds are processed quickly, taxpayers would be wise not to rely on consistently rapid turnaround of their tax assessment and not spend the refund before it is received.