What is return preparation support?
Computations and supporting schedules prepared for a licensed preparer to review and sign.
A tax or accounting practice registered with the Tax Practitioners Board has a fixed lodgment calendar and a variable workload, and the gap between them is exactly what breaks a practice every October and every March. What we build is drafting capacity for that gap: the return computation, the supporting schedules, and the reconciliations that get an individual or business return to the point where a registered agent can review it against the source documents and lodge it under their own registration, without the practice hiring a season's worth of extra staff who leave again once the peak passes.
The work sits entirely upstream of lodgment. We take a client's source documents — payment summaries and STP data, dividend and interest statements, prior-year return, trial balance for a business client — and produce the computation: the draft return inside the practice's own lodgment software, supporting schedules (depreciation and capital allowance pools, CGT event calculations, Division 7A loan schedules where a private company is involved, trust distribution resolutions), and a reconciliation memo flagging anything genuinely requiring the agent's own judgment. The registered agent reviews that draft, makes the calls that need one, and lodges under their own PRN with the ATO. Every lodgment, signature, and act of representation on a client's behalf is carried out by the registered agent, under their own PRN.
Who files this
Your firm, as the registered agent files or lodges this. We prepare, reconcile and support the numbers behind it; the submission itself is theirs, every time.
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Return preparation support, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Return preparation support in Australia
TASA 2009 s.90-10 draws the line at ascertaining or advising, not at typing the return
A tax agent service under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 s.90-10 is defined by ascertaining or advising a client's liability, or representing entitlement, under a taxation law — a service reserved for TPB-registered agents. Producing a computation for a registered agent's own review, where the agent checks the figures against source documents and makes the final determination before lodging, sits on the delivery side of that line. If the deliverable independently decided the client's liability rather than presenting a computation for the agent to accept, adjust, or reject, it would cross it — which is why every judgment point in the computation is flagged rather than resolved.
Only the registered agent lodges, under their own PRN
Lodgment through the ATO's agent-linking and Online services for agents requires a valid Tax Practitioner registration and the associated agent identifiers on the client's account. TPB registration and lodgment authority sit with your practice's registered agent, who lodges every return we support under their own PRN — the same registration that makes them, not us, accountable to the ATO and the client once it's filed.
Division 7A minimum repayments and benchmark interest are a computation; whether a loan is caught is a determination
Once a Division 7A loan agreement exists, calculating the minimum yearly repayment against the ATO benchmark interest rate is a mechanical computation we can build and track year over year. Whether a particular payment or transaction between a private company and a shareholder or associate is caught by Division 7A in the first place — including questions about unpaid present entitlements, or whether an exclusion applies — is a determination for the registered agent, and we flag any transaction with that characteristic for their review rather than classifying it ourselves.
A trust distribution resolution is drafted for review, never finalised by us
A valid trust distribution resolution generally needs to be made before 30 June, applying the trust deed's own streaming and distribution mechanics correctly to each beneficiary. We can prepare the calculation and a draft resolution reflecting the numbers the agent or trustee directs, but the decision of how income and capital gains are actually distributed, and the resolution's final form, is the agent's and trustee's call — not a position we set independently.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A draft return computation built inside the practice's own lodgment software (or delivered to import cleanly into it), matched to the source documents and prior-year return supplied.
- Supporting schedules matched to the return's actual complexity — depreciation and capital allowance pools, CGT event workpapers with cost base and discount detail, Division 7A minimum repayment schedules where a private company loan exists.
- A trust distribution calculation reflecting the numbers the agent or trustee directs, prepared ahead of the 30 June resolution deadline rather than reconstructed after it.
- A prior-year comparison flagging material movements — a deduction that dropped, an income item that shifted category, a carried-forward loss that changed — so the reviewing agent sees what changed before signing off on why.
- A reconciliation memo listing every item genuinely requiring the agent's determination, separated clearly from the mechanical computation, so review time is spent where it's actually needed.
- STP-sourced payroll and PAYG withholding data reconciled into the computation directly, rather than re-keyed from a separate payment summary.
