Guides that answer the question, then cite the source

Every Australian company has an ASIC annual review date — usually its registration anniversary — that triggers an annual statement, a review fee currently set at $342 for a standard proprietary company, a details check, and a solvency resolution, all due within 2 months.

The Australian financial year runs 1 July to 30 June, and 30 June is a trigger date, not just a books close — it starts a sequence of finalisation and lodgment deadlines that runs from mid-July through the following May.

The four quarterly BAS due dates, how monthly reporting runs on a different clock, what a registered agent's lodgment-program concession actually extends, and what the books need to look like before a BAS can be prepared.

STP finalisation is the year-end declaration that tells the ATO your payroll reporting for each employee is complete, due 14 July for most employers and 30 September for closely held payees.

The super guarantee rate is 12% of an employee's qualifying earnings, and from 1 July 2026 the payment clock changed from a quarterly cycle to Payday Super — contributions must now reach the employee's fund within 7 business days of each payday, not 28 days after quarter end.

What pay as you go withholding requires an Australian employer to register for, withhold, and report — the mechanism behind each pay run, where it lands on the BAS, and how it differs from PAYG instalments.

A Taxable Payments Annual Report is required from businesses in building and construction, cleaning, courier, road freight, IT, and security or investigation services that pay contractors — due 28 August, and only as accurate as the contractor payment records kept all year.

Most Australian tax and business records must be kept for five years, some records tied to assets run longer, and employee time and wage records fall under a separate seven-year rule from the Fair Work Act.

A business must register for GST once its GST turnover reaches $75,000 (or $150,000 for a non-profit organisation) — but that threshold is tested against current AND projected turnover, so the practical question is rarely "what did we earn" and almost always "what does the next twelve months look like," which is a determination your registered tax or BAS agent makes from your revenue records, not a number a guide can compute for you.

The R&D Tax Incentive is a self-assessed tax offset, not a grant: companies with aggregated turnover under $20 million get a 43.5% refundable offset on eligible R&D spend, larger companies get a non-refundable, intensity-tiered offset instead. It runs on two separate gates — AusIndustry registers the R&D activities each year, within 10 months of year-end with no discretion to extend, and the ATO processes the actual offset claim inside the company tax return, which only a TPB-registered tax agent can lodge for a fee.

The ACNC sorts registered charities into small, medium, and large tiers by annual revenue, and the tier decides whether a financial report is optional or mandatory, and whether that report needs a review or a full audit.

Three different roles, three different legal permissions: a bookkeeper records and reconciles with no registration required, a BAS agent is registered with the Tax Practitioners Board to ascertain and advise on GST/PAYG liabilities and lodge activity statements, and a tax agent holds a broader TPB registration covering income tax returns and tax advice generally — the line between them is drawn by the Tax Agent Services Act 2009, not by job title.

A bookkeeper can lodge a client's Business Activity Statement for a fee only if they are registered with the Tax Practitioners Board as a BAS agent — lodging a BAS on someone else's behalf is expressly listed as a "BAS service" under s.90-10 of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009, and providing one for a fee while unregistered is a civil penalty contravention. An unregistered bookkeeper can still do the recording and reconciliation work that feeds into the BAS; they just cannot ascertain the figures or press submit.

Yes — no law bars a company officer from preparing and lodging their own company income tax return themselves, and self-lodgment is legally the same act as an individual self-lodging via myTax. What actually keeps most companies off that path is the substance of the return itself: correctly applying the base-rate-entity test that decides between the 25% and 30% company tax rates, maintaining the franking account, and getting Division 7A shareholder-loan compliance right — plus losing the extended lodgment deadline that comes with using a registered tax agent.

A business can always lodge its own Business Activity Statement — Australian law places no restriction on a business acting for itself, and the ATO provides a direct self-lodgment path through Online services for business or myGovID for sole traders. The registration requirement under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 falls on someone charging a fee to ascertain, advise on, or lodge a BAS for someone else, not on a business handling its own affairs.

Australia phases mandatory climate reporting in by size: Group 1 entities report from financial years starting 1 January 2025, Group 2 from 1 July 2026, and Group 3 from 1 July 2027, with a two-of-three test on consolidated revenue, gross assets and employees deciding which group an entity lands in.

Section 1707D of the Corporations Act gives forward-looking climate statements — Scope 3 emissions, scenario analysis, transition plans — a modified liability shield: only ASIC can act on them, and only for injunctions or declarations, but that shield is tied to a fixed calendar window, not each entity's own first three reporting years, so Group 2 and Group 3 entities get less runway than Group 1.

Incorporating does not just change a tax return — it creates a legal wall between the owner and the business, and that wall has to be maintained in the ledger through a separate bank account, a director loan account, and a set of ASIC obligations that a sole trader never has, none of which existed the day before the company was registered.

A Group 1 or Group 2 customer asking a smaller supplier for emissions data is following AASB S2's mandate to measure Scope 3 emissions against the GHG Protocol — the request is a downstream Scope 3 obligation, and a defensible response starts with the same activity data most businesses already record.

Recording your own transactions, reconciling accounts and running payroll is not restricted to any licensed profession in Australia, and cloud software with bank feeds and Single Touch Payroll has made accurate DIY realistic for longer than it used to be — but GST registration, payroll obligations, Payday Super's 7-business-day contribution deadline, and 30 June are fixed points where DIY either holds up or does not, and ascertaining a BAS liability is a line only a TPB-registered agent may cross for a fee.

Australian law does not require any business to use a BAS agent to run its own books or lodge its own BAS. The Tax Agent Services Act 2009 instead regulates the PROVIDER side: anyone who ascertains a BAS liability, advises on one, or represents a client to the ATO for a fee must be a BAS agent registered with the Tax Practitioners Board — a rule that determines who your bookkeeper can lawfully be, not whether you need one at all.

For lodging a tax return, the title that matters is "registered tax agent," not "accountant" — accounting is not itself a protected function under Australian law, and plenty of accountants are not TPB-registered tax agents. Anyone can self-lodge an individual or sole-trader return free via myTax with no deadline advantage; engaging a registered tax agent instead extends the lodgment deadline substantially, but only if the client is added to that agent's client list before the standard 31 October due date.

A Group 3 entity under Australia's mandatory climate reporting regime can publish a short statement instead of a full sustainability report if it determines, under AASB S2, that it has no material climate-related financial risks or opportunities — but that determination is itself an assessment that must be made, documented, signed off by directors, and covered by an auditor's report.

MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks Online all report Single Touch Payroll, connect to bank feeds, and produce a BAS-ready GST summary — the differences that actually distinguish them are in payroll category structure, the shape of the bank-feed rule engine, and how each platform models accountant/agent access, not in whether any one of them can technically do the job.

Paying someone outside the business to record transactions and reconcile accounts is lawful and common in Australia; the line the law actually draws is around who ascertains or advises on a BAS liability and who lodges with the ATO, and that line does not move just because the bookkeeper works offshore.

Only a person or firm registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) as a BAS agent or tax agent may charge a fee for ascertaining, advising on, or lodging a BAS-related liability — and that requirement is triggered by charging a fee for the work, not by where the provider is physically located. Providing a BAS service for a fee while unregistered is a civil penalty contravention under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009, currently exposing an individual to penalties up to roughly $91,000 and a corporation to roughly $455,000 per breach at the 1 July 2026 penalty-unit value.

Australian bookkeeping and BAS work sits on three separate legal tiers, not one continuum: unregistered bookkeeping (recording and reconciling, open to anyone), BAS agent services (ascertaining, advising on, or lodging a BAS-related liability for a fee, reserved for a Tax Practitioners Board-registered BAS agent), and tax agent services (the same for income tax, reserved for a registered tax agent) — all three defined by the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 and checkable on the TPB's public register.