When your BAS is due, and what to check before it is

When is your BAS due?

Which set of dates applies depends on how you report, and most small businesses report quarterly.

If a due date falls on a weekend or a public holiday, you have until the next business day to lodge and pay.

Two things can give you longer. Lodging online may make you eligible for an extra two weeks on a quarterly BAS, and lodging through a registered agent may also give you extra time.

Quarter 2 is the exception, and it catches people out. No later due date applies to it, because the 28 February date already includes a one-month extension. If you have built a habit around "the agent date is always later", quarter 2 is where that habit produces a late lodgement.

Source: due dates for lodging and paying your BAS at the Australian Taxation Office.

What about monthly reporting?

The due date to lodge and pay a monthly BAS is the 21st day of the month following the end of the taxable period. A July monthly BAS is due on 21 August.

You must report monthly if your GST turnover is $20 million or more, and you can choose to report monthly below that. Monthly lodgers generally do not receive the agent concessions that apply to quarterly lodgers.

One exception worth knowing if it applies to you: schools and associated bodies lodge their December BAS by 21 January.

What about annual reporting?

Annual reporting is available if you are voluntarily registered for GST and your turnover is under $75,000, or under $150,000 for a not-for-profit body.

1. 31 October is the due date to lodge and pay the annual GST return.
2. 28 February following the annual tax period, if you are not required to lodge a tax return.

If you use a registered agent, different dates may apply.

Does lodging through an agent change the date?

For most quarterly lodgers, yes. Registered agents lodge under a program that sets different dates from the standard ones shown above.

Two things are worth being clear about. The concession is a feature of the lodgement program rather than something a business earns by hiring somebody, and it does not apply uniformly to every period: quarter 2 has no later date at all, because 28 February already carries a one-month extension. And it changes when the statement is due, not what it has to say. An agent lodges what the file contains. Handing over an unreconciled file moves the work rather than removing it, and it usually comes back as questions.

The rule underneath the dates is simple: the lodgment program date falls 28 days after the original due date, and quarter 2 is the exception with no later date at all.

Under the current lodgment program. This is a reference table for the year, not a list of what is still ahead: rows whose dates have already passed are kept, so check the year and quarter before planning around a row.

The last row is provisional. The ATO confirms it when the 2027-28 lodgment program is developed, so treat it as the expected date rather than a settled one.

Read the quarter 2 row twice. It is the only line with no later date, and it is the one that catches people who have learned to assume the agent date is always a month behind.

What happens if you miss the date?

The ATO applies a failure to lodge on time penalty, which is calculated in penalty units and scales with the size of the entity and how late the lodgement is. General interest charge can also apply to an unpaid amount.

We deliberately do not publish the current penalty unit value or the general interest charge rate here. Both are indexed and both change, and a figure on a page nobody revisits is worse than no figure. Check the current values on the ATO website at the time you need them.

Two practical points that matter more than the amounts. Lodging on time and paying late are treated differently from not lodging at all, so a statement you cannot yet pay is still worth lodging. And if you are behind, the ATO's own guidance on payment arrangements is the right starting point rather than silence.

The deadline before the deadline

The date on the calendar is the lodgement deadline. The one that decides whether the statement is right falls earlier, and nobody sets it for you.

Before the period closes, the file needs to be reconciled: not ticked, reconciled. If your bank reconciliation is out, everything is out, because every figure on the activity statement is derived from transactions that either did or did not land in the file correctly. There is a fuller walk through in how to reconcile in Xero, and the checks specific to a statement are in getting BAS lodgement right.

A short version of the order:

1. Reconcile the bank accounts against the actual statements, not against what the software reports.
2. Reconcile the payroll accounts before finalising anything, because single touch payroll reports whatever it is sent.
3. Run the GST reconciliation for the period and compare it to what the activity statement is about to lodge.
4. Resolve anything dated in a period you have already reported on before you touch the current one.

Doing that in the week before the date is a routine. Doing it on the date is a gamble, and it is where a quarter's worth of small errors gets locked in and carried forward.

If the numbers do not agree and you cannot see why

That is worth half an hour rather than a quarter of guessing. Book a Call Today and we will look at the file with you.