It’s traditionally the time when a lot of financial decisions are made or re-evaluated.

By now, already a month into the new financial year, anybody who is a PAYG employee should have received their group certificate and be preparing to submit their annual returns to the Australian Taxation Office, if they haven’t already done so.

There are so many ways to get the paperwork done — you can do it yourself by filling in the paper forms and posting them in — or if you have the internet, you can fill in the information using the appropriate forms from the ATO website and lodge it electronically.

There are also tax agents and accountants who are more than willing to do this task for you, and in many cases you can claim their fee as a legitimate deduction next year.

Using a tax professional can save you the worry of keeping up with the changing rules about deductions and in many cases they can also assist with getting you a higher refund than you might have expected if you’re battling with the paperwork yourself.

If you’re fortunate enough to be getting one, there’s always the question of what to do with your refund.

Of course, what many people fail to realise is that this money is actually a part of their income.

It was just paid to the tax office in advance, to ensure their tax obligations were met.

So if you are one of those people who regularly use their credit card as an extension of their wages — now is the perfect time to repay.

If your credit card balance is cleared every month, your tax refund could be used to help reduce your mortgage.

This, in turn, will lower the interest payable (as it’s calculated daily on the balance of what you owe) and will help to get your property paid off a little faster.

Sounds tempting, doesn’t it?

Then, of course, if you’re fortunate enough to be in the small minority of people who have no debt, then you get to make the decision as to whether you “spend it” or “save it”.