Overdue BAS for carpenters and joiners: tools, timber and subcontracting

Let 2Fin do the boring bits

Catching up is mostly sorting, and sorting is the part 2Fin takes off you. Bring in two years of bank statements at once — CSV, Excel or PDF, several files in one go — and Fin reads every line; in testing, 1,891 transactions came in in about a second on a desktop computer. Each transaction is categorised with its GST or VAT worked out, every overdue quarter is listed with its due date, and Fill all periods saves a draft of each one with a single press.

What is left for you is the decisions, not the data entry. Purchases are grouped by payee — the timber yard, the tool shop, the fuel — so you answer each payee once and the answer covers every quarter. Fin’s confident guesses (80% sure or more) can be accepted in one tap and undone one by one, and a payee can become a rule so the next import sorts itself. Every figure opens to the transactions inside it, and the finished statements export for you or your agent to check and lodge.

Your income is already on file

Builders and head contractors who are primarily in building and construction report every payment to their subcontractors in a Taxable Payments Annual Report. If you were paid as a subbie, those payments are already with the ATO, year by year. Your catch-up BAS should account for the same income in the quarters you were paid; a bank file is the easiest way to make the two line up.

As a subcontractor you charge GST on your invoices once registered, and report and pay it on your BAS; the builder pays on your invoice.

Tools, timber and the credits behind them

A new drop saw, a nail gun or a trailer is a business purchase like the timber is: once registered, you claim the GST in 1B, at the business share. On Simpler BAS there is no separate capital purchases label to fill. Income tax treats tools differently (depreciation or an immediate write-off), which is your return’s business, not the BAS’s.

Keep tax invoices for anything over $82.50 including GST; a supplier has 28 days to provide one when you ask. This is general information. Check what applies to you with a registered tax or BAS agent, or with the tax office.

When you pay other chippies: your own TPAR

A subcontractor who is primarily in building and construction and pays other contractors lodges a TPAR too, for the people they pay. The test is whether building and construction is at least half of your business income or activity this year, or of your income last year. Report the full amount of an invoice that mixes labour and materials; leave out materials-only payments, employees and private home jobs.

Carpentry in the UK or New Zealand

In the UK, HMRC’s Flat Rate Scheme places joiners and carpenters in labour-only building or construction (14.5%) when materials are under 10% of turnover, otherwise general building or construction (9.5%); VAT registration starts at £90,000. In New Zealand, GST registration starts at $60,000 a year; see the New Zealand guide.