Folio 1 of 6 · Registration types
1Tax agent or BAS agent?
Both are registered by the Tax Practitioners Board, but a registered BAS agent can provide only some of the services a tax agent is registered to provide. The plainest difference is the tax return: a BAS agent may prepare and lodge a client’s business activity statement, but not their tax return.
Which kind a practitioner is appears on their TPB Register entry, along with any conditions that narrow what they may do.
General information, not tax advice. The TPB’s page Finding and using a tax practitioner is the place to check which kind of practitioner suits a piece of work.
1.1Who may do what
The TPB compares the two across eight common services offered for a fee or other reward. Only two of them are for tax agents alone: preparing and lodging tax returns, and personal advice on the tax implications of financial advice. The rest of its list, from the BAS itself to fringe benefits tax, superannuation guarantee payments and dealing with the ATO for a client, is open to either kind of agent. The full comparison is on the TPB’s Finding and using a tax practitioner page.
1.2What the law calls each service
The two kinds of service are defined in the Tax Agent Services Act 2009. A tax agent service is any service that relates to working out or advising about a person’s liabilities, obligations or entitlements under a taxation law, or to representing them in their dealings with the Commissioner of Taxation, where the person
“can reasonably be expected to rely on the service for either or both of the following purposes: (i) to satisfy liabilities or obligations that arise, or could arise, under a taxation law; (ii) to claim entitlements that arise, or could arise, under a taxation law.”
Tax Agent Services Act 2009, section 90-5, Federal Register of Legislation
A BAS service, under section 90-10, is a tax agent service of the same kind that relates to a “BAS provision”. The TPB lists what those provisions cover: the GST law and the other indirect tax laws, the wine tax, luxury car tax and fuel tax laws, the parts of the tax administration law about the pay as you go (PAYG) system, the collection and recovery part of the fringe benefits tax law, and a few others.
The TPB can also declare other services to be BAS services by legislative instrument. One registered on 5 November 2020 lets BAS agents provide certain extra services, including some superannuation guarantee work, such as determining and reporting a superannuation guarantee shortfall, and lodging the taxable payments annual report for a client.
1.3Where bookkeeping ends and a BAS service begins
Not every job done on a business’s books is a BAS service. The TPB publishes what it calls “a non-exhaustive list” of examples, and several of its examples turn on whether the work requires “the interpretation or application of a BAS provision”.
| The work | BAS service? |
|---|---|
| Coding transactions and tax invoices where the coding means interpreting or applying a BAS provision | Yes |
| Coding tax invoices and moving data across for a client, as directed and supervised by a registered tax or BAS agent | No |
| Reconciling BAS provision data entry to work out the figures for a client’s activity statement | Yes |
| Performing bank reconciliations | No |
| Completing activity statements for a client, or telling them which figures to include | Yes |
| Entering data without involvement in or calculation of the figures for a client’s activity statement | No |
| Installing accounting software and setting default GST and other codes tailored to the client | Yes |
| Installing accounting software without setting tailored default GST and other codes | No |
| Advising on taxes and duties under state or territory law | No |
Read side by side, the pairs suggest a reading, and it is this guide’s rather than the TPB’s: the same software and the same invoices can sit on either side of the line, depending on whether someone is applying the GST or PAYG rules to them. The TPB’s full list, with 42 examples, is on its BAS services page.
1.4The fee is what triggers registration
Section 50-5 of the Act is where registration becomes a requirement. In short, a person contravenes it if they provide a service they know, or ought reasonably to know, is a BAS service, charge or receive a fee or other reward for it, and are not a registered tax agent or BAS agent. A parallel rule covers tax agent services that are not BAS or tax (financial) advice services, which, with limited exceptions for lawyers, only a registered tax agent may provide for a fee.
The TPB adds that a similar requirement applies to lawyers who prepare or lodge tax returns, and that there are significant civil penalties for providing or advertising BAS services for a fee while unregistered.
1.5Conditions narrow it further
A registration can carry conditions. In the TPB’s words, “Registered tax practitioners may have a condition imposed on their registration, which means they are only allowed to provide certain types of services.” The TPB Register displays any conditions. On an entry, the type of registration and the conditions line answer this page’s question between them. Checking the TPB Register walks through the rest of an entry.
Balance carried down
A tax return for a fee is tax agent work; a BAS can be done by either kind of agent; plain data entry is not a BAS service at all. The register entry shows which kind of agent someone is and any limits on what they may do.