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BAS Agent Services

What is a Registered BAS Agent?
Several years ago

the Federal Government decided to provide quality assurance to business owners who were contracting Bookkeepers to calculate their BAS returns. Various legal cases had raised some serious issues about responsibility for numbers being lodged that had later turned out to be incorrect, with Business owners having to pay more tax and also fines.

A Registered BAS Agent must prove their qualification to practice as a BAS Agent, their experience, and they must hold Professional Indemnity insurance. They must be a fit and proper person (no convictions relating to tax or fraud), they must abide by a professional code of conduct, they must continue to learn, to remain current. The code of conduct means that agents must act with honesty & integrity, independence, confidentiality, competence and take reasonable care.

What’s in it for Business Owners? Why should a business owner pay more for a Registered BAS Agent to prepare their BAS returns? Not only do you have a proven qualified and experienced person who is backed by Professional Indemnity Insurance doing your work but work performed by Registered BAS Agents also provides safe harbour to businesses. That means, where an agent is responsible for failing to lodge a document on time, or making a false or misleading statement resulting in a shortfall of tax, taxpayers may not be held liable to some administrative penalties, in some cases.

On the flip side, people preparing BAS statements for businesses MUST be registered. If your bookkeeper is not your employee, and is not a Registered BAS Agent, they are liable to fines of the order of $25,000 to $50,000.

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