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Simpler business activity statement (BAS) requirements are due to kick in on 1 July 2017, and testing has already shown widespread benefits for SMEs and accountants.
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Simpler BAS tipped to open doors for accountants
15 March 2017
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9 minute read
The Commonwealth government announced in the May 2016 federal budget that simpler BAS would be rolled out to all small businesses from 1 July 2017.
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The ATO has been undertaking simpler BAS testing throughout 2016-17, including partnering with software providers to conduct an 'alpha test' of the GST bookkeeping component of the simpler BAS.
Intuit Australia’s country manager and vice president Nicolette Maury told Accountants Daily that they are offering new customers the chance to participate in the test.
“We’ve just launched the alpha test of Simpler BAS, and we've invited some of our new QuickBooks customers to opt into simpler GST,” Ms Maury said.
“What this enables them to do is reduce the number of line items in a business activity statement from seven to three.”
Simpler GST reporting means small businesses only fill in GST on sales, GST on purchases and total sales. Export sales, GST free sales, capital and non-capital purchases will no longer be needed to be reported on.
Ms Maury said that testing has already shown that Simpler BAS will benefit small businesses by reducing time spent on compliance.
“Our small business customers tell us that their biggest fear is getting compliance wrong, so we foresee that this will enable them to be more confident in running their business and to be able to spend more time working on improving their business rather than worrying about compliance,” Ms Maury said.
On top of this, the Simpler BAS will also benefit accountants working with small business clients.
“Equally, when it comes to our accounting partners what they tell us is they want to be moving the time they spend away from checking data and checking on compliance to becoming a true business partner to their small business clients,” she said.
“So what's exciting about this is it gives accountants the opportunity to provide more of those value-added services to those small businesses to spend more time on forward-looking opportunities rather than looking at how they need to do their compliance.”
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