BAS Lodgement in Australia: How to Lodge Your BAS Online, Through a Registered Agent or by Mail, and the Mistakes to Avoid

Last updated: 13 October 2026. Written by the FreeMyCloud team.

Checked against the ATO’s BAS lodgement, due date, penalty and payment pages, the BAS agent lodgment program 2026-27 and the Tax Practitioners Board register on 13 October 2026.

BAS lodgement is the act of sending your business activity statement to the ATO and paying what it shows. The ATO gives you three ways to lodge a BAS: online (through Online services for business, the myGov-linked service for individual operators, or accounting software such as Xero or MYOB), through a registered tax or BAS agent, or on paper by mail. Most Australian businesses lodge quarterly, the standard due dates are 28 October, 28 February, 28 April and 28 July, and lodging online or through a registered agent can add up to four weeks to three of those four dates. A BAS with nothing to report still has to be lodged as a nil BAS.

This guide is for owners, office managers and bookkeepers who prepare or sign off a BAS. It covers what a BAS statement is, the 2026-27 BAS lodgement dates, how to lodge BAS online step by step, what a registered BAS agent can do that you cannot, how to do a BAS statement label by label (with a worked example), the mistakes the ATO sees most, how to pay, and what happens when a BAS is late.

What is a BAS statement, and who has to lodge one?

A business activity statement (BAS) is the form the ATO uses to collect several taxes at once. On one statement you report and pay the GST you collected on sales, claim GST credits on purchases, report the PAYG withholding you took out of wages, pay any PAYG instalment towards your own income tax, and, where they apply, report fringe benefits tax instalments, luxury car tax, wine equalisation tax and fuel tax credits. The ATO’s How to lodge your BAS page (updated 14 September 2026) lists the three taxes every BAS covers: GST, PAYG instalments and PAYG withholding.

If your business is registered for GST, you must lodge a BAS. Registration is compulsory once GST turnover reaches $75,000 a year ($150,000 for not-for-profits), and for taxi and rideshare drivers at any turnover. The ATO issues each BAS about two weeks before the end of the reporting period, personalised to your registrations, which is why you cannot lodge on a sample form or on someone else’s.

Three reporting cycles exist, and the ATO sets yours from the GST turnover on its records:

• Monthly if GST turnover is $20 million or more, or if the ATO has directed you to report monthly. Businesses under $20 million can choose monthly for cash-flow reasons.
• Quarterly if GST turnover is under $20 million and you have not been told to report monthly. This is the cycle most small and medium businesses are on.
• Annually if you are voluntarily registered (turnover under $75,000). You lodge an annual GST return instead of a quarterly BAS.

Some quarterly payers receive an instalment notice rather than a BAS. If you pay GST or PAYG instalments by the amount the ATO works out (option 1) and have nothing else to report, the notice shows a GST instalment at G21 and a PAYG instalment at T7. You pay it by the due date and do not need to lodge anything unless you want to vary the amount. For the difference between the people who can prepare a BAS and the people who can lodge it for you, see our guide to who does what among bookkeepers, BAS agents and accountants.

BAS lodgement dates for 2026-27

The due date to lodge and pay is printed on the BAS itself. Where a date falls on a weekend or public holiday, the ATO accepts lodgement and payment on the next business day. The standard dates, taken from the ATO’s Due dates for lodging and paying your BAS page (updated 17 September 2026) and the BAS agent lodgment program 2026-27 (1 July 2026), are:

Period	Standard due date	Lodging through a registered agent electronically
Quarter 1, July to September 2026	28 October 2026	25 November 2026
Quarter 2, October to December 2026	28 February 2027	No extension (the date already includes a one-month holiday extension)
Quarter 3, January to March 2027	28 April 2027	26 May 2027
Quarter 4, April to June 2027	28 July 2027	25 August 2027
Monthly BAS	21st of the following month (July BAS due 21 August)	No concession, except the December statement: 21 February instead of 21 January for clients up to $10 million turnover
Annual GST return (voluntary registrants)	31 October, or 28 February if you do not have to lodge a tax return	Agent dates may differ

Businesses that lodge their own quarterly BAS online may also be eligible for an extra two weeks to lodge and pay, except for quarter 2. The agent concession only applies to a statement that generates after the previous one was lodged electronically, so a first BAS, or one that follows a paper lodgement, may keep the standard date. The full calendar, including the November and January dates that trip people up, is in our BAS due dates 2026-27 post and the wider ATO due dates 2026-27 hub.

How to lodge BAS online

Most businesses that lodge their own BAS do it online, and the ATO makes it compulsory once GST turnover reaches $20 million. Online lodgement gives you the possible two-week extension, on-screen alerts when a figure looks wrong, a chance to review the calculated amount before you submit, and generally a faster refund. Once you lodge online, every future BAS is delivered electronically and is normally available about one week after its generation date. If your email address is on file, the ATO sends a notification about 21 days before the due date.

Online services for business

This is the ATO’s secure website for companies, partnerships, trusts and any business that is not an individual operator. Log in with your myID, open the Lodgments tab, and the current BAS sits under Not lodged; past statements are under History. Select the statement, choose Prepare, enter the amounts at each label, review the summary and submit. The same screen is where you lodge a revision or request a change to your reporting cycle.

Online services for individuals and sole traders (myGov)

Individual operators lodge through the ATO service linked to their myGov account, which the ATO calls “Online services for individuals and sole traders”. The process is the same: Lodgments, then the statement, then Prepare. The ATO app can set calendar reminders for each due date.

How to lodge BAS in Xero and MYOB (SBR-enabled software)

Standard Business Reporting (SBR) lets accounting software lodge directly with the ATO. In Xero, the activity statement is prepared from your reconciled transactions, you review each label, connect the file to the ATO once, and lodge from inside Xero; Xero’s own guide to preparing and lodging BAS online walks through it. MYOB Business works the same way through its activity statement screen. Lodging from software only saves time if the bank feeds are reconciled and every transaction carries the right tax code first, which is the part a bookkeeper does. Our Xero bookkeeping and MYOB bookkeeping teams prepare the statement in the client’s file, and the client or their registered agent presses lodge.

ATO BAS lodgement by phone (nil statements only)

You cannot phone in a BAS with figures on it, but you can lodge a nil BAS on the ATO’s automated service, 13 72 26, any time of day. Have your TFN or ABN and the BAS document ID (top right of the statement) ready. The service handles current and overdue statements, up to three at a time. It cannot be used for an annual GST return, for GST instalment payers, to vary a statement to nil, or where the statement has a pre-printed amount above zero at F1, G21, T2, T7 or 7A. Online, the equivalent is Prepare then Prepare as nil.

How to lodge BAS through a registered BAS agent

A registered tax agent or BAS agent can prepare, lodge, vary and pay a BAS on your behalf through Online services for agents or the practitioner lodgment service. The ATO still lets you see the statement in your own online services, so nothing is hidden from you. Three things come with using an agent:

• Extra time. The BAS agent lodgment program gives electronic lodgers until 25 November 2026, 26 May 2027 and 25 August 2027 for quarters 1, 3 and 4 of 2026-27.
• Safe harbour from the late penalty. If you gave the agent everything needed to lodge on time and the delay was the agent’s, and not reckless, the ATO will not charge you the failure to lodge penalty.
• Someone who can legally give BAS advice. Only a practitioner registered with the Tax Practitioners Board can charge a fee to prepare or lodge a BAS or advise on GST and PAYG withholding registration. Check the TPB public register before you engage anyone; business.gov.au notes there is no protection for a client of an unregistered agent.

FreeMyCloud is not a registered tax or BAS agent. Our graduate accountants, based in the Philippines, do the bookkeeping that produces the BAS figures, reconcile them, and hand an ATO-ready statement to the client’s registered agent, or to the client to lodge in their own ATO online services. That split is explained on our BAS and the ATO service page.

How to lodge a paper BAS by mail

If you still receive a paper BAS, complete the original form the ATO posted (white-out is allowed for corrections), and mail it in the pre-addressed envelope. If the envelope is lost, the address is Australian Taxation Office, Locked Bag 1936, Albury NSW 1936. A paper statement can take up to three weeks after the generation date to arrive, and a lost one has to be reissued by phoning 13 28 66. Paper lodgers do not get the online two-week extension, and their refunds are slower. For a business with any volume of transactions, moving to online lodgement is the single easiest BAS improvement to make.

How to do a BAS statement: BAS labels explained

Which labels you complete depends on your GST reporting method. Businesses with GST turnover under $10 million use Simpler BAS by default and report only three GST labels. Businesses at $10 million or more use full reporting. PAYG withholding labels appear on every BAS of an employer. The label list below is from the ATO’s Quarterly GST reporting page (14 September 2026) and its PAYG withholding labels guide.

Label	What goes there	Who completes it
G1	Total sales for the period, including GST	Everyone registered for GST
1A	GST on sales	Everyone
1B	GST on purchases (GST credits)	Everyone
G2, G3, G10, G11	Export sales, other GST-free sales, capital purchases, non-capital purchases	Full reporting only ($10 million or more)
W1	Total gross salary, wages, allowances, leave loading, director fees and other payments subject to withholding	Employers
W2	Tax withheld from the payments at W1	Employers
W4	Tax withheld (47%) from suppliers who did not quote an ABN	Anyone who paid a no-ABN invoice
W3, W5, 4	Other withholding; total of W2 + W4 + W3; that total carried to label 4 in the summary	Employers
T7 / G21	PAYG instalment and GST instalment amounts the ATO has worked out	Instalment payers

The ATO’s completion rules are strict and mechanical: whole dollars only (drop the cents, never round up), no negative figures, no symbols, each invoice counted once, and only the labels that apply to you. On a paper form, leave a box blank rather than writing NIL. A cash-basis business reports sales and purchases in the period the money moved, not the period of the invoice.

BAS statement example

Here is a Simpler BAS for a cafe with two employees, on a cash basis, for the September 2026 quarter. The figures are illustrative.

Label	Figure	Where it came from
G1 Total sales	$88,000	Takings banked in the quarter, GST inclusive
1A GST on sales	$8,000	One eleventh of the taxable sales
1B GST on purchases	$3,000	GST on $33,000 of purchases with tax invoices; bank fees and GST-free food are left out
W1 Total wages	$36,000	Gross wages from the payroll report for the quarter
W2 Withheld, carried to 4	$5,200	PAYG withheld from those wages
Net amount payable	$10,200	1A plus 4, minus 1B ($8,000 + $5,200 – $3,000)

The gross wages at W1 come from the same payroll records the Fair Work Ombudsman requires you to keep and show on pay slips, so the BAS and the pay slips should always agree. The W2 figure must agree with the PAYG withholding already reported through Single Touch Payroll for the same months. The ATO pre-fills that figure for many employers, so a mismatch is an early signal that payroll and the ledger have drifted apart. Our PAYG withholding guide explains the pre-fill and the monthly and quarterly withholder cycles.

The BAS mistakes the ATO sees most, and how to fix them

The ATO’s BAS and GST tips page is a list of the errors it corrects most often. The ones we see in new client files are:

• Claiming GST where there is none. Bank fees, stamp duty, GST-free basic food, private expenses, and purchases from businesses that are not registered for GST all carry no credit.
• Claiming without a tax invoice. A GST credit on a purchase of $82.50 or more (GST inclusive) needs a tax invoice. Credits must be claimed within four years.
• Counting an invoice twice, usually once from the bank feed and once from a manually entered bill.
• Wrong period. A cash-basis business reporting on invoice dates, or an accruals business reporting on payment dates.
• Claiming the whole of a mixed-use purchase instead of the business share, or claiming on the full price when a discount was given.
• Reporting cents, negatives or symbols, which the ATO’s scanning and validation reject.
• Lodging the tax return before the last BAS, which makes the year-end reconciliation harder. The ATO suggests lodging all BAS first.

Fixing a figure that was wrong at the time is a mistake; reporting something that was right but later changed (a returned sale, a price adjustment) is an adjustment. Adjustments go in the current BAS. Most GST mistakes, such as a transposition error or a double-counted purchase, can also be corrected in the next BAS, subject to the ATO’s limits on debit and credit errors. If a mistake cannot be absorbed that way, you lodge a revision of the original statement through Online services for business, your software, or your agent. The rules are on the ATO’s Fixing BAS mistakes or making adjustments page. Keep every tax invoice and GST record for five years.

How to pay your BAS

Lodging and paying are separate steps. The payment due date is on the statement and is the same as the lodgement date for the standard cycles. Every payment needs your payment reference number (PRN, also called the EFT code), which is on the BAS and in your online account; pay without it and the money can sit unallocated. The ATO’s How to pay page lists BPAY, payment through ATO online services, direct deposit, debit or credit card, Government EasyPay and Australia Post. You can also pay early to offset a future BAS.

BAS payment plan

If the full amount cannot be paid by the due date, the ATO asks you to contact it, or have your agent contact it, before the date. A business that owes $200,000 or less can usually set up a payment plan in ATO online services without phoning. Plans need an up-front payment, run weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and the activity statement account needs its own plan separate from income tax. General interest charge keeps accruing on the balance, compounding daily, so the ATO’s estimator steers you to the shortest schedule you can afford. A plan defaults if a new BAS is lodged late or left unpaid.

What happens if you lodge late: failure to lodge penalty and interest

Two things can follow a late BAS. The first is the failure to lodge on time penalty (page updated 22 June 2026). The base penalty is one penalty unit for every 28 days, or part of 28 days, that the statement is overdue, up to five units. A penalty unit is $364 for anything that falls due on or after 1 July 2026 ($330 between 7 November 2024 and 30 June 2026).

Entity size	Multiplier	First 28 days late	Maximum (5 units)
Individual or small withholder (under $25,000 withheld a year)	1x	$364	$1,820
Medium withholder ($25,000 to $1 million withheld, or income or GST turnover $1 million to $20 million)	2x	$728	$3,640
Large withholder (over $1 million withheld, or $20 million or more)	5x	$1,820	$9,100

The ATO says it generally does not penalise an isolated late lodgement, warns by phone or letter first, and usually does not issue a penalty where the late statement produces a refund or a nil result (large withholders excepted). Holidays and being busy are listed as reasons it would decline to remit a penalty; serious illness, disaster and missing third-party information are reasons it would likely accept.

The second consequence is general interest charge on any amount unpaid after the due date. GIC is reviewed quarterly and compounds daily, and GIC incurred on or after 1 July 2025 is no longer deductible. The ATO can remit GIC in extenuating circumstances, but only on request. Unpaid BAS debts also attract firmer action, including director penalty notices for a company’s unpaid PAYG withholding and GST. Our post on contractor vs employee rules covers the withholding side of that risk.

How FreeMyCloud prepares an ATO-ready BAS

A late or wrong BAS is almost always a bookkeeping problem that surfaces at lodgement time: unreconciled bank feeds, invoices coded to the wrong tax rate, payroll that does not match the ledger. FreeMyCloud places university-qualified graduate accountants, based in the Philippines and working Australian business hours, with businesses from individual operators to ASX-listed companies. For BAS, the work each quarter is:

• bank feeds reconciled weekly in Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks or Reckon, so the quarter is never rebuilt in the last week
• every sale and purchase coded with the right GST treatment, tax invoices attached for anything at $82.50 or more
• W1 and W2 tied to the Single Touch Payroll figures through our outsourced payroll service
• a draft BAS with a one-page reconciliation, delivered to you or your registered agent at least a week before the due date
• the lodgement itself done by you in your own ATO online services, or by your registered BAS or tax agent

The service costs typically 50 to 70% less than a local equivalent, with no lock-in contracts, no setup fees and a signed NDA, and a new accountant can start within three business days. It sits alongside your existing accountant, who keeps the lodgement and the advice. Start with our outsourced accounting and bookkeeping page, or the small business bookkeeping page if you have fewer than 20 staff. Tradies and builders on quarterly BAS with TPAR obligations have their own page: bookkeeping for tradies.

BAS lodgement: frequently asked questions

What is a BAS?

A BAS, or business activity statement, is the ATO form a GST-registered business uses to report and pay GST, PAYG withholding and PAYG instalments, plus FBT instalments, luxury car tax, wine equalisation tax and fuel tax credits where they apply. The ATO issues it about two weeks before the end of each monthly or quarterly period, personalised to your registrations, and the due date for lodging and paying is printed on it.

How do I lodge BAS online?

Log in to Online services for business (or the myGov-linked ATO service if you are an individual operator), open Lodgments, select the statement under Not lodged, choose Prepare, enter the amounts at each label, review the summary and submit. You can also lodge from SBR-enabled software such as Xero or MYOB once the file is connected to the ATO. Online quarterly lodgers may get an extra two weeks on quarters 1, 3 and 4.

When is BAS lodgement due?

Quarterly statements are due 28 October, 28 February, 28 April and 28 July. Monthly statements are due on the 21st of the following month. Clients of a registered agent lodging electronically get until 25 November 2026, 26 May 2027 and 25 August 2027 for quarters 1, 3 and 4 of 2026-27; quarter 2 has no extension. A due date on a weekend or public holiday moves to the next business day.

Can I lodge a nil BAS by phone?

Yes. Phone the ATO’s automated service on 13 72 26 at any time with your ABN or TFN and the BAS document ID from the top right of the statement. It accepts current and overdue nil statements, up to three per call. It cannot take an annual GST return, a GST instalment statement, a variation to nil, or a statement with a pre-printed amount at F1, G21, T2, T7 or 7A. Online, choose Prepare then Prepare as nil.

What is the penalty for late BAS lodgement?

The failure to lodge on time penalty is one penalty unit ($364 from 1 July 2026) for every 28 days or part of 28 days the statement is overdue, capped at five units, or $1,820, for individuals and small withholders. Medium withholders pay double and large withholders five times that. The ATO generally warns first, rarely penalises an isolated late lodgement, and usually does not penalise a late statement that results in a refund or nil. General interest charge applies separately to any unpaid amount.

Can FreeMyCloud lodge my BAS?

No. FreeMyCloud is not a registered tax or BAS agent, so it does not lodge statements or give BAS advice. Our graduate accountants do the bookkeeping, reconcile the quarter and prepare an ATO-ready BAS with a reconciliation. You lodge it in your own ATO online services, or your registered BAS or tax agent lodges it and keeps the agent due dates and safe harbour that come with that.

This article is general information about Australian bookkeeping and reporting obligations, current as at 13 October 2026. It is not tax, financial or legal advice. FreeMyCloud is not a registered tax agent and does not prepare or lodge tax returns. Rates, thresholds and dates change. Confirm your own position with your registered tax or BAS agent.