Tax Reconciliation Template With Excel Export

Start From Accounting Profit

This tax reconciliation template adds your add-backs to accounting profit before tax, then subtracts your deductions. The result is the taxable-income or loss figure supported by those entered adjustments. Your classifications control every entry.

Start with the agreed profit or loss before tax from the final financial statements. Record the accounts reference and income-year label. If your ledger result is after tax, reconcile the income-tax expense separately to establish the before-tax opening amount.

This workpaper reconciles accounting profit to taxable income. An income-tax-expense reconciliation explains the tax charge in the accounts. An effective-tax-rate reconciliation compares that charge with a rate-based amount. Those financial-reporting calculations need separate workpapers.

Enter Each Tax Adjustment

An add-back increases the opening result. A subtraction reduces it. Enter each adjustment as a positive amount, choose its direction and record the source reference and treatment note. Remove an unused row so it does not leave an incomplete adjustment.

Permanent adjustments do not reverse through a later tax deduction or assessment of the same item. Timing adjustments arise when accounting and tax recognise an item in different periods. Choose the classification from your assessment of the facts and applicable tax law. The template never determines deductibility from a description.

The ATO company tax return 2026 carries accounting profit from item 6 into item 7, Reconciliation to taxable income or loss. Item 7 includes non-deductible expenses at W and other deductible expenses at X. Record the actual return label in your treatment note where relevant. A workpaper classification is not an automatic return-label allocation.

Follow a Worked Reconciliation

The tool opens with a fictional company’s $128,450 accounting profit before tax. Its practitioner assesses $2,800 of expenses as non-deductible and enters a permanent add-back. A $4,500 prior-year provision is paid this year. Assume it was added back previously and qualifies for deduction this year without another claim in the accounts.

The practitioner enters that $4,500 as a timing subtraction. The calculation is $128,450 plus $2,800 less $4,500, giving $126,750. Permanent net adjustments are $2,800 and timing net adjustments are -$4,500. These assumed treatments illustrate the signs; they do not classify another company’s expenses.

If the opening result changes to a $10,000 loss, the same adjustments give -$11,700. A negative result remains a workpaper loss. It does not establish an available tax loss or whether that loss can be carried forward, transferred or deducted.

Use the Excel Workpaper

Download Excel XML creates an Excel-compatible XML spreadsheet on your device. It keeps the entered adjustment rows, directions and classifications alongside source references and treatment notes. It also retains preparer and reviewer references, review notes and the independent return figure.

Open the .xml file in Excel, then save it in your practice’s workbook format. The export uses numeric cells and formulas for signed adjustments and the profit-to-taxable-income bridge. Its other summary figures retain the downloaded values. Recalculate and recheck those summaries if you edit the exported rows. The download is not an .xlsx file.

Enter your independently prepared taxable-income figure in Return figure to compare it with the bridge. The example matches $126,750 and shows a zero difference. A non-zero difference needs investigation: check the accounts version, adjustment direction, omitted rows and return entries before recording review.

The headline and totals show whole dollars. Exported numeric cells retain cents, so a small difference can remain even when displayed amounts look equal. A difference prompt uses the underlying cents. All tool inputs and the download stay on your device, without a tax-account connection or saved draft.

Keep the Review Trail

Use the preparer and reviewer references to record responsibility in your file. Add a review note describing the checks completed and any unresolved treatment. An entered reviewer reference or a zero arithmetic difference is not professional approval.

Reconcile the accounts source, inspect each adjustment’s evidence and confirm the treatment before signing off through your practice’s review process. This workpaper excludes tax payable, tax offsets, loss utilisation and deferred tax. It does not prepare or lodge the return.