Your Australian tax function —
from first sale to full scale.

Stage 1Client status assessment — the six determinations

Before anything is registered, signed or paid for, we run your facts through the six legal tests that govern a non-resident seller in Australia — because they are six different tests, with six different answers, and a single business can sit at a different point on every one.

• GST registration — are you required to register, from when, and on which system?
• ABN entitlement — which identity pathway applies, and what does the evidence trail need?
• Public officer — is a resident officer actually required, or being sold to you unnecessarily?
• Permanent establishment — does warehousing here make your profits taxable here? (Usually not — and we show you why on the current treaty wording, not a pre-2017 textbook.)
• Income tax return — is there a lodgment trigger at all, and how is a "no" properly administered?
• ASIC registration (ARBN) — does the Corporations Act's own exclusion list describe your business model? (For marketplace sellers, it usually does.)

Each determination is delivered as a short written assessment — your facts, the conclusion, the reasons, and the statute behind them — reviewed and signed by the firm. Together they form your onboarding record and define exactly what you're paying for and, just as importantly, what you're not. The first thing we tell most new clients is what they don't need: no Australian company, no rented "resident officer", no reflexive annual tax return. Every obligation is advised on its own statutory terms — and charged only when its own test is met.

Stage 2ABN & GST registration — done right the first time

For an overseas seller the legal entitlement is the easy part. The hard part is a manual identity process run by a specialist ATO team, with a 43-day document deadline and zero tolerance for mismatches. That process is where self-managed applications die — and where process control earns its keep.

• Documents before lodgment, always. We collect and quality-check the full certified set first — notarisation wording, accredited translations, name strings matched character-for-character against passports and certificates — and only then lodge, so the 43-day clock starts when the file is already complete. For Chinese clients we work with notarial certificates from Chinese notary offices, which satisfy the certification and translation rules in a single document.
• The right system, chosen deliberately. Australia offers non-residents two GST registrations, and the "easy" one is a trap for anyone warehousing stock here: it blocks every dollar of GST credits, including the 10% you pay at the border on your own inventory. We register warehousing sellers on the standard system with a full ABN — and we regularly rescue sellers who self-registered on the simplified system and watched their margin disappear at customs.
• Timed to your first shipment. Import GST recovery only runs from your effective registration date. Registration timed to first stock movement turns a compliance cost into a cash recovery; every month unregistered is border GST you never get back.

Stage 3Tax compliance — BAS preparation & lodgment

Once registered, GST becomes a quarterly cycle: the Business Activity Statement. Done properly, for most importing sellers the cycle pays for itself.

• Marketplace-native preparation. We reconcile platform payout reports to real sales — separating your own taxable domestic sales from any platform-collected legs — so output GST is right, not guessed. This is exactly the seam where marketplace sellers over- or under-report.
• Every credit you're entitled to. Import GST claimed each quarter against your customs documentation, with the importer-of-record details checked — the paperwork detail that quietly decides whether the border GST is yours to claim at all. Where volumes justify it, we set up deferred GST so the border payment disappears into the BAS instead of your cash flow.
• Lodged on agent deadlines, every quarter. Your BAS is prepared, sent to you for approval with a plain-English (or Chinese) summary of what's payable or refundable, lodged through the agent program, and archived with the five-year evidence trail the law expects you to hold.

Stage 4Local tax agent — representation & ongoing liaison

The part of the service you feel all year: a registered Australian tax agent on your file, between you and the ATO, in your language and your time zone.

• On the record. We're listed with the ATO as your agent — official correspondence comes to us, gets read by someone who knows your file, and is answered properly and on time. You receive a summary in English or Chinese, with what it means and what (if anything) you need to do.
• Ready before the question arrives. The ATO data-matches customs records and marketplace reports. Because your six determinations are written down and refreshed, a "please explain" letter is answered from a position that already exists on file — the difference between not lodging and not needing to, documented in advance.
• The annual review. Each year — and at any change: new warehouse, first employee, a director considering a move — we re-test the six determinations, formally close off any year where no income tax return is needed, and tell you in advance when growth is about to switch an obligation on, with the deadline that comes with it.