Income Tax 551 'Overdue' in myGov: what it means and how to clear it

551 is the ATO account number for an individual's income tax account in ATO online services. It is not a penalty code, a case number or a reference to a particular year. Every individual has one, and it is where income tax assessments, refunds, payments and any income tax debt are recorded.

When the status against that account reads Overdue, it means one of two things, and sometimes both: one or more tax returns have not been lodged, or there is an unpaid income tax debt sitting on the account.

That is the whole meaning of the word. It does not tell you how many years are involved, how much is owed, or whether the ATO has taken any action. To see which years are actually outstanding, go to Tax, then Lodgments, then Income tax in ATO online services. That screen lists the years the ATO is expecting from you.

The most common reason is simply that a return the ATO expected has not arrived. The ATO holds income data reported by employers, banks, health funds and Centrelink, so it knows a year is open even if you have never contacted it.

The status can also appear where every return is lodged but an income tax amount remains unpaid. In that case the lodgments screen will show nothing outstanding, and the balance on the account is the issue instead.

It is worth checking both. People often assume the flag is about a debt when it is about a missing year, and just as often assume it is about an old year when the real issue is an unpaid assessment.

Nothing happens instantly, which is exactly why the status sits there for years in a lot of cases. But the position does not improve on its own.

Where returns stay unlodged, the ATO can apply a failure to lodge penalty, and it can issue a default assessment based on the information it holds rather than waiting for your return. A default assessment usually overstates the tax because it does not include your deductions.

Where the account carries an unpaid income tax debt, the general interest charge accrues on that balance, so the figure you see today is not the figure you will see in six months. Unresolved debts can also move into firmer recovery action over time.

Lodge first. Work out which years the lodgments screen is asking for and get those returns in. Once the missing years are lodged and assessed, the overdue status against the 551 account updates. This is the step that resolves the flag, and it is also the step that establishes what you genuinely owe rather than what the ATO has estimated.

Then deal with penalties and debt. Once the real numbers exist, any failure to lodge penalty can be challenged or a remission requested, and any balance can go onto a payment plan. Doing this in the other order rarely works, because the ATO will not settle a debt figure it cannot yet calculate. Our guide on how late lodgement penalties and interest work covers that sequence in detail.

If several years are open, you do not have to sort out which ones or find old paperwork first. Once you sign a free authority to act, we retrieve the ATO pre-fill data for each year and work from that. A free assessment tells you how many years are outstanding, what the likely outcome is for each, and the fixed fee to clear them. There is no judgment about how long it has been.