ATO simplifies business activity statements

The Taxation Office has recently announced that it is working towards making a simpler BAS to reduce GST compliance for small businesses and also make GST record keeping and reporting easier.

This is a result of tax professionals, small businesses and industry associations expressing their concerns to the ATO over current BAS requirements. From 1 July 2017, the ATO is reducing the number of labels on activity statements. Small businesses will only need to report:

• GST on sales

• GST on purchases

• Total sales

The ATO will remove the requirement to report export sales, capital purchases, non-capital purchases and other GST free sales. The changes are designed to reduce GST record keeping costs, save time and simplify account set up, bookkeeping processes and BAS preparation.