Riverview tax: wages, ABNs and work gear

At the 2021 Census, nearly one employed resident in five was a labourer. Across Queensland it was one in ten. Machinery operators and drivers made up 15.6% of the suburb's workers, more than twice the state share, and the largest single industry was meat processing, at 4.4% of workers against half a percent statewide.

Trades workers, at 12.2%, sat slightly below the state figure, and managers and professionals together were 16.6% against 33.9%. For most people here, tax starts with a payslip.

Payslip or ABN

If a site or an agency asks you to get an ABN and invoice them, the ABN does not decide whether you are a contractor. The ATO looks at the legal rights and obligations in the contract as a whole, and whatever label the contract uses is irrelevant. For some jobs its guidance is blunt: labourers and trades assistants are always treated as employees.

Even a genuine contractor, contracted personally and paid wholly or principally for their own labour, counts as an employee for super, and super guarantee is payable on the labour part of the invoice. If you have been invoicing for what looks like a job, get advice before you lodge. It changes your return, and super may be owed to you.

When the ABN is real

Some residents do run their own business, often a truck or a cleaning round. Building and industrial cleaning employed 3.0% of working residents at the census, two and a half times the state rate.

Nobody withholds tax from an invoice, so put money aside from the first one. Once your latest return shows instalment income of $4,000 or more, your latest notice of assessment shows tax payable of $1,000 or more and your estimated tax is $500 or more, the ATO puts you into PAYG instalments and you pay towards next year's tax as you go.

GST is a separate trigger. You must register within 21 days of your GST turnover reaching $75,000, and from then on you lodge a BAS. If your business does cleaning, courier or road freight work and pays other contractors to do some of it, you may also need to lodge a taxable payments annual report by 28 August.

We handle registrations, BAS and returns under tax and compliance, and bookkeeping in Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks under accounting and operations.

Boots, knives and the $1,000 standard deduction

For employees, 2026–27 changes the sums on work gear. Wage earners now get up to $1,000 as a standard deduction without receipts. Most work expenses you claim reduce it dollar for dollar (union and professional association fees do not), so in practice you end up with the $1,000 or what you can prove you spent, whichever is more.

Protective gear still counts towards an actual claim: steel-capped boots or cut-resistant gloves, provided you paid for them and your employer did not supply them or pay you back.

Tools take more care. A tool costing $300 or less can be claimed in full in the year you buy it, but not if it is part of a set that cost more than $300 together. Dearer items are claimed over their effective life, and from this year those depreciation claims also reduce your standard deduction. A tool you expect to use mainly in a wage job can no longer be added to a low-value pool.

The sum to do is whether your real work costs will pass $1,000 this year. If you replace your own tools often or drive between sites, they might. Keep receipts until you know.

Meeting us from Riverview

We work with clients across Brisbane and Ipswich. We can sit down with you in person by arrangement, or talk it through on video before or after a shift. Start with the tax return questionnaire, or use Get in touch if your question is about an ABN or unpaid super.

We fix the fee before we start, and how we set fees explains how we build a quote.

New Zealand was the most common birthplace after Australia, for 4.8% of residents. If you still have income or KiwiSaver across the Tasman, raise it early. Tax on both sides of it is our speciality.