Preschoolers and the Education Tax Rebate

i have my internet subsidised by my employer. my daughter will have expenses at pre-school next year, but we have already factored these into the living costs – one of the expenses will be the school fees. I don’t know where the ETR will factor into our family, but then, i am not the financial controller. I am the main income earner.

That is I’m getting just $188 for the ETR I shall be getting a much healthier amount otherwise 🙂

I completed my etax refund today and because my son is in kindy he gets half a year rebate and I’m geting $188.00 back and $29 will carry over to next year.

I didn’t claim for much, just the Jacaranda school pack they are required to have ($105) and 5 months worth of internet a $60 a month (missed a month disconnected, but you can claim for the full year or half year). I didn’t worry about any of the other ones I my have been able to.

If you need to use the worksheets they provide take a valium first if you don’t have an understanding of maths, I didn’t use them but wasn’t fun when I had a meant-to-be-quick go in my head.

I’m happy to have it 🙂

It will be a brave government that attempts to remove the myriad ways that public money is now funnelled into private pockets. I suspect that the over-riding need to attend to the rotting public infrastructure in the nation might provide motivation. I hope so.

There’s a heavy dose of sarcasm in some of those posts. But if you think it is so terrible to take up the offer of paying less tax, write to the Treasurer and insist this be removed.

No preschoolers in this house, by the way.

Let me get this right; you want a tax rebate for being povided with 12 hours a week of free babysitting. Talk about snouts in the trough.

Ah I received letters from the ATO, but nothing specifically adressing preschool. I just thought it was because my child is now full-time school age.

I will be claiming internet costs – yes my preschooler did use the Internet (under supervision/guidance). One of the directly related purposes was looking up songs that she had learned but could only remember part of. We have her preschool teacher to thank (NOT!) for introducing “Agadoo” into our household. And the original pushbike song film clip makes for a good laugh!

Now that she is at school she has a Mathletics login, and we use another literacy/numeracy games site that they also use in class.

deezagood said :

What on earth CAN you claim Deano?

See http://www.educationtaxrefund.gov.au/what-can-i-claim/ for the specifics, but basically you can only claim laptops and computers, computer related hardware, software, Internet connections, textbooks and study guides, stationery, and tools of trade.

The refund is available to all school children. I bought my son in kindergarten a new eeePC netbook. Unfortunately his school does not permit students to take laptops to school (fingerpaint wrecks the keyboard apparently) so I am keeping it safe for him. Of course, with the way technology progresses and gets out of date quickly, I’ll probably have to sell it and buy him a new one next year.

I have a preschooler this year (and had one last year) and received a letter from the tax office in the last week or two telling me that preschoolers are included in this rebate.

So could you claim the cost of buying a set of school readers?
Can’t imagine I’ll be getting laptops for my two pre-schoolers.