What is bas preparation?
The Business Activity Statement prepared from reconciled GST control accounts — lodgment-ready for your registered agent, every cycle.
The BAS is not a GST form with extra fields bolted on — it is the single periodic return most Australian businesses deal with the ATO through. GST collected and GST credits claimed sit on it alongside PAYG withholding on staff wages, PAYG instalments toward the year-end income tax bill, and, for the businesses that carry it, FBT instalments. One statement, one due date, one net figure owing or refundable. There is no separate GSTR-1/GSTR-3B split the way India runs it — the outward-supply detail and the summary-and-payment step are the same form, the same lodgment.
What lands on the BAS is only as good as the ledger it comes from. Every sale needs the right GST tax code (GST, FRE, INP, EXP, GNR, N-T, and the rest, depending on the accounting package), every purchase needs its GST credit correctly claimed or excluded, and the GST control accounts — GST collected, GST paid — need to tie to the transaction detail behind them, not just to a number that happens to balance. A BAS pulled from an unreconciled file can be arithmetically consistent and still wrong, because a wrongly coded transaction nets out somewhere else on the same statement.
Who does what
Your registered BAS or tax agent lodges; CapEasy prepares the reconciled file they lodge from. TASA 2009 draws this line and we build to it.
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | BAS preparation, 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. |
BAS preparation in Australia
TASA 2009 s.90-10 defines what a "BAS service" is, and preparing one for a fee sits inside it
Section 90-10 of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 defines a BAS service as, broadly, any service that relates to ascertaining or advising about liabilities, obligations or entitlements under a BAS provision, or representing a client to the Commissioner in relation to one, done for a fee or other reward. GST registration, BAS and IAS preparation and lodgment, and dealing with the ATO on a client's GST affairs all fall inside that definition. Only a person or firm registered with the Tax Practitioners Board as a BAS agent or tax agent may provide a BAS service for a fee — CapEasy prepares the reconciled figures and the workpapers behind them; your registered BAS or tax agent is the one who reviews, ascertains what goes on the statement, and lodges it.
GST tax codes decide what lands on each BAS label — the amount alone tells you nothing
A transaction's dollar value is identical whether it's coded GST, FRE or INP; what changes is which BAS label it flows to and whether a GST credit is claimed on it. A purchase coded GST when the supplier actually charged no GST overstates the credit claimed on label 1B; a sale coded FRE when it should carry GST understates GST collected on label 1A. We reconcile every transaction's code against its source document before it feeds a BAS figure, and flag anything the code and the description disagree on.
The GST control accounts have to tie out, not just look plausible
GST Collected and GST Paid (or their equivalent accounts, however the ledger names them) are control accounts — every dollar in them should trace back to an individual transaction with a tax code attached. A control account that balances to a round number without every line reconciled against a bank statement or invoice is a sign the file was adjusted to fit, not built from source documents. Our handoff pack ties the control accounts to the transaction detail behind them, so your agent is reviewing a reconciliation, not taking a number on faith.
Monthly BAS has no extension; quarterly has one, but only if you were already on an agent's books
The 21st-of-the-month monthly BAS deadline applies to everyone, self-lodging or agent-lodged, with no extension mechanism at all. Quarterly due dates (28 Oct, 28 Feb, 28 Apr, 28 Jul) do carry an agent-lodgment extension of roughly four weeks, but the ATO only grants it where the client was already engaged with the registered agent ahead of the original due date and the agent's other lodgment obligations for that client are current — it is not something a late-arriving client can retroactively claim on the deadline that's already passed.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A GST tax-code reconciliation for the period — every sale, purchase and adjustment grouped by code (GST, FRE, INP, EXP, GNR, N-T) and matched to its source document.
- The GST Collected and GST Paid control accounts reconciled to the transaction detail behind them, tied to bank statements for the period.
- A draft BAS figure set mapped to each ATO label — G1 total sales, G3 GST-free sales, G10/G11 acquisitions, 1A GST on sales, 1B GST on purchases — ready for review.
- PAYG withholding figures for the period reconciled to pay runs processed, where the client also runs payroll through the period.
- PAYG instalment figures carried forward at the rate or amount the ATO has notified for the period, checked against the client's current instalment notice.
- An exception log flagging any transaction where the GST code looked inconsistent with the account, the description, or the supplier it was matched against.
