You recorded a bank fee, an interest payment and a laptop. Your activity statement needs each of them on a different label — and getting one wrong means over-claiming credits or under-reporting sales. Fin gives every category a tax treatment so the statement fills itself in, label by label, with a source on every figure.
A bank fee, an interest payment and a laptop look like three ordinary lines on a bank feed, and each belongs on a different part of the activity statement. The bank fee has no GST in its price, so it is a purchase at G11 with nothing to claim, noted at G14. The interest is income with no GST, but it is not GST-free — it is input-taxed, reported at G4, and it quietly denies credits on anything you bought to earn it. The laptop is a capital purchase: its GST is claimable now at 1B through G10, while the cost itself is written off over years in the asset register.
No GST in the price. Reported at G11 as a purchase, and again at G14 so no credit is claimed. Treatment: GST-Free Expenses.
A financial supply. Reported at G1 and G4 as input-taxed income, not G3 GST-free. Treatment: Input Taxed Income.
A capital purchase with $200 of GST. G10 on the statement, the $200 to 1B this quarter, and the $2,000 written off over two years. Treatment: GST on Capital.
A tax treatment is a tax code, not a rate. It answers two questions for every line at once: is tax inside this price, and which label on the return does the amount feed. A 10% rate tells you how much GST is in a taxable sale; it cannot tell you that an export goes to G2, that residential rent goes to G4, or that a transfer between your own accounts goes nowhere at all. Accounting platforms call the same thing a tax rate or a tax code — GST on Income, GST Free Income, Input Taxed, GST on Expenses, GST on Capital, BAS Excluded — and the codes are the vocabulary your accountant already uses.
Bank Fees defaults to GST-Free Expenses, Interest Income to Input Taxed Income, Computer Equipment to GST on Capital. Set it once and every transaction sorted into that category inherits it.
The merchant fee that did carry GST, or the one export invoice in a domestic sales category, gets its own treatment from the inline GST editor. The transaction always wins over the category.
A recorded GST of zero does not make a line GST-free — it might be input-taxed, out of scope, or simply not enriched yet. Where no treatment is set, Fin falls back to what it can see and marks the result Inferred on the statement, so you know which rows to check.
The rate at the transaction date, the labels, and each authority's definition come from the public @ai2/tax-plugins package, checked against the worksheet the authority publishes. When a rate changes, the date it changed is in the ledger, not in a setting you have to remember to update.
The treatment codes are the same everywhere; each country plugin maps them onto its own form. The table shows where each treatment lands — the Australian BAS labels, the IRD GST101A boxes, the HMRC VAT100 boxes, the CRA GST34 lines, the IRAS GST F5 boxes and the Indian GSTR-3B tables.
| Treatment | Australia (ATO) | New Zealand (IRD) | UK (HMRC) | Canada (CRA) | Singapore (IRAS) | India (GSTN) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GST on Income | G1 · 1A | Box 5 | Box 1, 6 | 101, 103 | Box 1, 6 | 3.1(a) |
| Export / zero-rated sales | G1 · G2 | Box 5, 6 | Box 6 | 101 | Box 2 | 3.1(b) |
| GST-Free Income | G1 · G3 | — | — | — | — | 3.1(c) |
| Input Taxed Income | G1 · G4 | not on the return | Box 6 | 101 | Box 3 | 3.1(c) |
| GST on Expenses | G11 · 1B | Box 11 | Box 4, 7 | 106 | Box 5, 7 | Table 4 |
| GST on Capital | G10 · 1B | Box 11 | Box 4, 7 | 106 | Box 5, 7 | Table 4 |
| GST-Free Expenses | G11 · G14 | excluded from Box 11 | Box 7 | — | — | Table 5 |
| Input Taxed Expenses | G11 · G13 | — | exempt-related | — | — | 4(B) |
| Private / non-deductible | G11 · G15 | Box 9 | excluded | excluded | excluded | 4(D) |
| Wages / PAYG withheld | W1 · W2 | — | — | — | — | — |
| BAS Excluded | not reported | out of scope | outside scope | out of scope | out of scope | 3.1(e) |
A dash means the country's return has no line for that treatment, so Fin does not invent one. Wages and PAYG withheld are Australian activity-statement labels only.
The activity statement in Fin is a document, not a form to fill in. It carries your business name, tax identifier, period, basis and who prepared it; one row per label with the official code and a plain description; and a provenance badge on every figure.
Any label can be adjusted, and the adjustment needs a reason — an invoice that arrived after the cut-off, a correction your accountant asked for. The original figure, the new one, the reason, who and when all go into the audit trail under the statement, and the trail lists the source transactions behind each section so a reviewer can walk from a label back to the bank line.
The simple view shows the labels most small businesses lodge. The full view adds the G1 to G20 worksheet and the instalment labels, with each section linked to the authority page that defines it. Print either to PDF.
Fin prepares; it does not submit. A declaration step gates marking the statement final, and from there you lodge through the ATO, myGov or your registered agent. AI2Fin is not a registered tax or BAS agent.
Step 1
Every category gets a grouped treatment picker — income treatments, expense treatments, capital, private, wages and BAS Excluded — with the labels each one feeds and the authority definition beside it.
Step 2
Fin proposes a treatment for each category from its name and history (bank fees to GST-Free Expenses, interest to Input Taxed Income, computers to GST on Capital). Nothing is applied until you review and accept the list.
Step 3
A merchant fee that did carry GST, or an export invoice in an otherwise domestic sales category — set the treatment on that one transaction from the inline GST editor. The transaction override always wins over the category default.
Step 4
For a phone plan or a vehicle used privately too, set the business share once. The statement sends the business share to G11 or G10 and the private share to G15.
Step 5
Each label shows Auto-filled, Inferred, Manual or Adjusted. Inferred rows are the ones worth a second look — they mean no treatment was set and Fin had to fall back to what it could see.
A capital purchase is two tax events on different clocks: the GST credit now, the cost over its effective life. The register carries the second one.
GST-free, input-taxed and BAS Excluded are the three codes people mix up. The long version, with the interest-income and bank-fee examples worked through.
A quick 1A, 1B and net figure from your quarter's totals — the arithmetic, without an account.
Single-term definitions: tax treatment, input-taxed, GST-free, BAS Excluded, capital purchase. Built for the way you work: sole traders, small business, working with an accountant.
Tax treatment, answered
The labels and formulas on this page come from the authorities' own worksheets. Read them directly:
Computed from published government rates and guidance. General information to prepare with, not personal tax advice — confirm what applies to you with your accountant or tax authority.
Connect your bank, accept the suggested treatments, and your next activity statement is already drafted — with a source on every figure.