You can claim the foreign income tax offset in your income tax return. Before you calculate your net income, you must convert all foreign income deductions and foreign tax paid to Australian dollars.

To claim a foreign income tax offset of up to $1,000, you only need to record the actual amount of foreign income tax paid on your assessable income (up to $1,000). If you are claiming a foreign income tax offset of more than $1,000, you have to work out your foreign income tax offset limit. This may result in your tax offset being reduced to the limit. Any foreign income tax paid in excess of the limit is not available to be carried forward to a later income year and cannot be refunded to you. If you paid foreign income tax after the year in which the related income or gains have been included in your assessable income, you may amend your assessment for that year to claim the offset.

As a non-refundable tax offset, the foreign income tax offset reduces your income tax payable (including Medicare levy and Medicare levy surcharge).

Under the tax offset ordering rules, the foreign income tax offset is applied after all other non-refundable tax and non-transferable offsets. Once your tax payable has been reduced to nil, any unused foreign income tax offset is not refunded to you, nor can it be carried forward to later income years.

Calculating your offset limit

If you are claiming a foreign income tax offset of more than $1,000, you will first need to work out your foreign income tax offset limit. This amount is based on a comparison between your tax liability and the tax liability you would have if certain foreign-taxed and foreign-sourced income and related deductions were disregarded.

Step 1

Work out the income tax payable by you (including Medicare levy and Medicare levy surcharge) for the relevant income year, excluding penalties and interest and disregarding any tax offsets.

Step 2

Work out the income tax that would be payable by you (including Medicare levy and Medicare levy surcharge) excluding penalties and interest and disregarding any tax offsets, if the following assumptions were made:

Your assessable income did not include:

~ any amount included in your assessable income on which foreign income tax has been paid that counts towards your foreign income tax offset

~ any other income or gains from a non-Australian source

You were not entitled to the following (where such deductions are actually allowable)

~ debt deductions attributable to your overseas permanent establishment

~ any other deductions (other than debt deductions) that are reasonably related to any amount covered by the first dot point above

~ an amount of the foreign loss component of one or more tax losses deducted in the income year.

For the purpose of this step, where deductions relate exclusively to the disregarded income amounts, you should assume that you were not entitled to the deductions.

Whether a deduction is reasonably related to the disregarded assessable income amounts will be a question of fact depending on the circumstances of the taxpayer. The meaning of ‘reasonably related to’ is broad and it includes a relationship that may either be direct or indirect, provided that the relationship consists of a real connection. However, a merely remote relationship is insufficient.

Where deductions relate to both disregarded income amounts and other assessable income (as would typically be the case with head office and general administration expenses) you will need to apportion the deductions on a reasonable basis.

Allowable deductions for items such as gifts, contributions, superannuation and tax agent’s fees are not considered to be reasonably related to any amount on which foreign income tax has been paid or other non-Australian source income.

Where foreign income is subject to averaging (for example, where the special professional income rules or primary production income rules apply) only the foreign income for the current year is excluded at this step. It is not necessary to separate the Australian and foreign amounts for prior years.

Step 3

Take away the result of step 2 from step 1. If the result is greater than $1,000, this is your offset limit.

Example

Anna, an Australian-resident taxpayer for the year ended 30 June 2025, has income and expenses and pays foreign income tax for the income year as follows: