Australian GST- Time to pay up

Andrew Greig algreig at bigpond.net.au
Thu Sep 1 05:57:07 EDT 2005


Hi All,

I am in Australia under the GST (Goods and services Tax) system, and I
have two accounts for GST in my liabilities section (copied from a
different program)  

GST Received (from sales of product) and owed to the Govt.
GST Paid     (from purchases I made for the business)

If I am trading well GST received should exceed GST Paid and then I send
a Cheque to the Gov't for the difference.

So how should I account for that cheque? Apparently, I need to zero the
two GST accounts, so does that mean I should have an account in Assetts
called BAS Payments (Business Activity Statement)? Or is the cheque
account enough to handle it?

One of the two accounts above is negative, the other is positive, so if
I owe the  Gov't then the Liabilities account should be positive? and if
they owe me (perish the thought) then there should be a -ve amount as
the difference between the two? IANAA 

I must say, that now that I have been running for a couple of months I
find this a really good way to handle the books, not the least because I
no longer have to boot into Windows for anything for my Business.

Many thanks

Andrew Greig
Melbourne, Australia
Community Distributor, OpenOffice.org
   






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