Behind with the ATO? We'll negotiate with them for you, free for our clients.

We negotiate with the ATO for you, free for clients

As your registered tax agent, RAN 26371473, we deal with the ATO on your behalf, from the overdue lodgments to the payment plan, whether the tax debt is GST, PAYG withholding or super. For Roger clients there is no extra fee for this: it comes with your package.

The ATO decides what it accepts. Our job is to give them a reason to say yes.

One thing we find when we take over a venue's books is ATO debt parked in the file and forgotten. It doesn't sit still: general interest charge compounds on it daily.

Lodge what's overdue, even if you can't pay it yet

The first job is getting every overdue BAS, IAS and STP report lodged. The ATO doesn't accept being unable to pay as a reason to lodge late, and lodging keeps more of your options open.

Leave a BAS unlodged and the ATO can estimate what the company owes. Directors can be personally liable for that estimate. An estimate counts as never reported, and once a debt has gone unreported for 3 months, paying in full is the only way to clear a director penalty on it.

Late activity statements and STP reports can also attract a failure to lodge penalty.

We also check your pay runs against what was filed through STP. Pay runs processed but never filed through STP turn up, and so does an STP finalisation that was never lodged, leaving staff unable to do their tax returns.

Once you're up to date, lodging through a registered agent may get you extra time on the quarterly BAS.

We re-check and fix your past BAS for free

We go back through the BAS you've already lodged, and fix what we find, free of charge, looking for GST you paid that you didn't owe and GST credits you never claimed. If we find GST you underpaid, we tell you that too, and we correct it within the ATO's limits for debit errors.

Two kinds of mistake can put money back with you:

• GST credits never claimed: GST on supplier bills, rent or equipment that never made it onto a BAS. You can claim it on a later BAS up to 4 years after the due date of the BAS where you could first have claimed it. After that it's gone, and the ATO has no discretion to extend the limit.
• GST overpaid by mistake: a sale reported twice, or a GST figure keyed wrong. The ATO calls these credit errors. Unless the ATO is already reviewing that period, you can correct one on a later BAS lodged within the period of review, which ends 4 years and one day after you lodged the BAS with the mistake.

The ATO says correcting on a later BAS is generally easier than revising the earlier one, which can attract penalties or general interest charge. We pick the route before anything is lodged.

One mistake mostly stays with the ATO. When a GST-free item has been rung up as taxable on your POS, the ATO generally treats that GST as passed on to your customers in the price. You can only get it back by reimbursing those customers, or by asking for a refund the ATO allows in very limited circumstances. The fix is the button, from this week on. Our piece on GST on takeaway food covers which items are GST-free to go.

A payment plan only holds while the new bills get paid

An ATO payment plan spreads a debt into weekly, fortnightly or monthly instalments. General interest charge keeps running on what's left and compounds daily. The rate for October to December 2026 is 11.51% a year, and GIC incurred from 1 July 2025 can't be claimed as a deduction.

The ATO doesn't accept plans as a matter of course. Whether all your lodgments, activity statements included, are up to date is one of the things it weighs, which is another reason we lodge first. If you owe $200,000 or less you may be able to set a plan up online, and a registered agent may be able to set it up for you.

Small businesses that owe activity statement amounts may qualify for an interest-free plan, paid by direct debit within 12 months. The ATO's conditions:

• Turnover: under $2 million a year.
• The debt: recent activity statement amounts of $50,000 or less, overdue for up to 12 months.
• Your record: a good payment and lodgment history, including no outstanding activity statement lodgments and no more than one payment plan default in the last 12 months.
• Your position: you can't get finance through normal business channels, and you can show the business is viable.

GIC is still charged on that plan, then remitted automatically as long as you keep to it.

A plan defaults if you miss an instalment, don't act on an arrears letter, or don't pay a new tax bill on time. The whole overdue balance then becomes payable at once, and the ATO may take firmer action: a garnishee notice to your bank, your trade debtors or your merchant card provider, a director penalty notice, or reporting the debt to credit reporting bureaus.

A plan and the next BAS on a $20,000 week

Take a venue owing $26,000 of overdue GST and withholding, taking $20,000 a week including GST, all of it taxable.

• Plan instalment, $26,000 over 52 weeks: $500
• GST on this week's sales, $20,000 ÷ 11: $1,818
• Less GST credits on this week's bills: $550
• Plus tax withheld from this week's wages: $700
• Put aside for the next BAS: $1,968
• Set aside every week: $2,468

If the venue qualifies for the interest-free plan, $500 a week clears the debt in a year. On a standard plan, if today's 11.51% held all year, the same $500 a week would leave about $1,640 of GIC still owing at the end, and none of it deductible.

Skip the $1,968, miss the next BAS, and the plan can default with the whole balance due at once.

A director penalty notice gives you 21 days from the day it's posted

If your venue runs through a company, its directors can be made personally liable for the company's unpaid PAYG withholding, GST and super guarantee charge. The ATO must send a director penalty notice first, and can start recovering 21 days after it issues it. The 21 days start on the day the ATO posts the notice or leaves it at your address on the ASIC register, so some of them may be gone before you open the envelope.

What you can do inside those 21 days depends on when the debt was reported. The ATO's practice statement calls the harder case a lockdown.

• Reported within 3 months of the due date: the penalty is remitted if, within the 21 days, the company pays the debt in full, appoints an administrator or a small business restructuring practitioner, or begins to be wound up.
• Reported more than 3 months late, or still unreported after 3 months (locked down): only paying the company's debt in full remits it. An ATO estimate counts as never reported.

That test is for PAYG withholding and GST; super guarantee charge has its own, on the same ATO page. We have lodged super guarantee charge statements for venues that came to us with super paid late or not at all, and our piece on payday super covers how that charge works now.

A payment plan isn't on the ATO's list of ways to remit a director penalty. The director's liability runs parallel to the company's, so every dollar paid on either comes off both.

Send us the notice the day it arrives. We read it with you, check from the lodgment dates which amounts are locked down, explain the clock and your options, and deal with the ATO. Where paying is the path, we set that up. Where the options include administration, restructuring, winding up or a defence, we bring in an insolvency adviser or lawyer that same day.

Your next BAS gets saved every week

Every weekly report we send has a BAS put-aside figure: what that week added to your next BAS. The ATO suggests setting aside GST and withholding, in a separate bank account if that helps. Move our figure across the same day and the money is there when the BAS is due. Our piece on reading your weekly P&L shows where that line sits on the page.

What it costs

Re-checking what you've already lodged, and correcting it, costs nothing. Essentials, at $599 a month, lodges your monthly IAS and quarterly BAS on top of the weekly bookkeeping and a monthly call with Amit.

The rest of the tax side is on our hospitality accounting and BAS and tax pages, and every package is on our pricing.