Little-known $5,000 ATO retirement loophole revealed: 'Pretty simple'

Financial advisor Robert Rich
Financial advisor Robert Rich explained the tax loophole you can use to your advantage if you time your retirement well. (Source: TikTok/Getty)

Australians considering retiring soon should think about when they officially hang up their work boots. There's a "simple" strategy that could see you pocket thousands of dollars without having to change anything.

Unite Wealth financial advisor Robert Rich revealed that if you worked the first two months of the new financial year, you could fall under the tax-free threshold and get all or part of your income tax back. He told Yahoo Finance he recently gave this advice to a couple who were looking to retire on June 30.

"I was saying to them that instead of stopping in June, why don't you just work for an extra couple of months, July and August, and then the ATO will give you all your money back."

He said in this scenario, both people in the relationship were earning $10,000 per month or $120,000 per year.

That meant that they were losing close to $2,500 each month to income tax.

However, with the tax-free threshold and certain offsets, you don't have to pay tax on the first $22,575 of your annual salary.

Rich said that by working July and August, this couple would effectively get around $5,000 each or $10,000 together back from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) because their income wouldn't have hit that threshold yet.

Do you have a story? Email stew.perrie@yahooinc.com

"This is really a relatively simple strategy for mums and dads. It's really just a case of understanding what the taxable income is going to be for the year," he told Yahoo Finance.

"Another interesting consideration that I think people don't realise when they retire or stop work, is if you retired in September and you had no other taxable income for the rest of the financial year, you could actually do your tax return in September and process any refunds then, rather than waiting all the way through till the following July to do it at the normal tax time."

But here is where it gets tricky

Rich explained that for the couple mentioned above, it was a relatively straightforward process because the amount they earned in that whole financial year was purely just from their wages.

However, he said that you could come unstuck if you have the following:

  • Work entitlements like annual leave or long service leave

  • Additional income from property or investments