The 2025-26 financial year ends at 11:59pm on 30 June 2026. A handful of tax positions are still adjustable between now and then if you act in the next four weeks. None of these are tax advice (every household has different circumstances and you should talk to a registered tax agent for your situation), but the five below are the practical moves most relevant to households dealing with mortgages, novated leases, small businesses and super.
Move one: top up super to the $30,000 concessional cap
The 2025-26 concessional contributions cap is $30,000 (up from $27,500 in 2023-24, indexed in $2,500 steps). Concessional contributions include employer SG, salary sacrifice and personal deductible contributions. Most working Australians are well short of the cap at this point in the year. Only the highest earners typically max it out through payroll alone.
A personal deductible contribution made before 30 June, lodged with a "notice of intent to claim" form to your super fund, can reduce assessable income by the contribution amount up to the cap. For a borrower on a marginal rate of 37 per cent plus 2 per cent Medicare levy, contributing $10,000 from after-tax savings into super saves roughly $3,900 in income tax versus the same money sitting outside super.
Two things to check: your super fund must receive the contribution before 30 June (lodge by mid-June at the latest to allow processing), and you must lodge the notice of intent to claim before lodging your individual return. Missing the notice of intent step is the single most common EOFY mistake. Also worth a look: the carry-forward unused-cap rule for total super balances under $500,000, which can let you use unused cap space from up to five prior years in a single contribution.
Move two: lock in the EV novated lease before 30 June
The FBT exemption on eligible electric vehicles continues for novated leases delivered before specific dates outlined in the original legislation. Lead times on EV deliveries through the major novated lease providers are running at 8-16 weeks for popular models. A contract signed in late June 2026 typically delivers 1-3 months into the new financial year, which still falls inside the FBT-exempt window for most eligible vehicles.
The pre-tax salary sacrifice on the lease starts from the first pay run after vehicle delivery, so signing now and getting delivery scheduled means the tax benefit applies to pay runs falling inside the 2026-27 financial year. We covered the detail of how the FBT exemption arithmetic actually works in our guide on EV novated leases (see /resources/ev-novated-lease-fbt-2026-australia), including the FBT-cap interaction for charity, hospital and PBI employees.
Move three: get work-related deduction receipts in order
The ATO has flagged 2025-26 deductions as a focus area for the year. The fixed-rate method for working-from-home deductions sits at 70 cents per hour as at the FY26 settings (up from 67 cents in FY24-FY25). The records you need to keep have not changed materially: timesheet evidence of hours worked from home, plus receipts for ineligible expenses if you want to claim more than the fixed-rate-method allows.
Three deductions worth checking before 30 June: depreciation on a home-office laptop or monitor purchased during the year (split between work and personal use), self-education expenses if directly connected to your current employment (course fees, textbooks, travel), and union or professional association membership fees. Records dated before 30 June claim against 2025-26 income. Records dated 1 July 2026 onward fall into the following year.
Move four: $20,000 instant asset write-off for small business
The 2026 federal Budget made the $20,000 instant asset write-off permanent for small businesses with annual turnover under $10 million (we covered the detail in the budget-2026-instant-asset-write-off-permanent piece on the news index). The asset must be installed and ready for use by 30 June. Eligible assets include vehicles, tools, equipment, and certain technology purchases.
For a sole trader or small partnership entity buying a $19,000 ute on 28 June for delivery on 30 June, the full $19,000 is deductible against 2025-26 business income, rather than depreciated over multiple years. At a 30 per cent marginal rate that is a $5,700 cash-flow benefit landing in the next tax return. The catch: the asset must actually be installed and ready for use, not just ordered. A vehicle picked up on 2 July is a 2026-27 expense.
Move five: private health insurance rebate timing
The private health insurance rebate is means-tested against income. The income thresholds for the 2025-26 year rebate are: singles up to $97,000 / families up to $194,000 (full rebate), with reduced tiers above. If you are close to a tier threshold and have flexibility on when to receive bonuses or commission income, the timing matters: pushing $5,000 of variable income from June into July can move you down a rebate tier and add several hundred dollars to your refund.
This is a smaller move than the first four but it is the kind of thing households consistently miss. Tax planning is mostly composition: small marginal adjustments to where and when income lands and what deductions apply against it. The first four moves above can each save thousands; the fifth saves hundreds. Stacked together they typically pay for the cost of seeing a registered tax agent and then some.
After 30 June: what changes
A few things shift on 1 July 2026: the concessional super contributions cap may index again (the next indexation step is widely expected to be $32,500 but not confirmed), Stage 3 tax cuts continue in their now-permanent settings, and the private health rebate income tiers index. None of these change the actions worth taking now. They simply mean a similar piece will be worth writing again in late August once the 2026-27 settings are confirmed.