Deferred GST Application: Eligibility, the Form and the BAS Label (2026)

Getting into the deferred GST scheme is an application, not a tick-box. The ATO’s form runs an eligibility check before it lets you apply: an ABN, a GST registration, a BAS lodged online and paid electronically, a monthly tax period, an authorised contact at the right account level, no outstanding returns or tax debts, and no relevant court convictions in the last three years. Pass it and the approval arrives as written notice with a start date. From then on the Integrated Cargo System defers all of the GST on every import declaration lodged under your ABN, the ATO pre-fills the month’s total at label 7A of your BAS, and you claim the same amount back at label 1B in the same statement.

Our earlier article explains what the deferred GST scheme is and whether monthly lodgment is worth it. This one is about the door: what the eligibility test checks, what the form asks, what changes at the border once you are in, how the BAS labels work month to month, and whether a non-resident seller can get through it at all.

(General information for FY 2026–27, not tax advice for your circumstances. Read on 12 October 2026 from the ATO’s deferred GST scheme page, the Australian Border Force’s deferral page as updated 23 September 2026, the ATO’s application form, and Division 33 of the GST Regulations 2019. The A$75,000 registration threshold is not indexed and may change.)

Question	Short answer
Who is eligible?	ABN, GST-registered, monthly BAS lodged online and paid electronically, goods for home consumption, clean lodgment and payment record, no relevant convictions in three years
Which form?	The ATO’s online “Application for approval to defer GST on imported goods”, NAT 75136, with an eleven-question eligibility check built in
What changes at the border?	The ICS defers all the GST on every declaration under your ABN; duty is still paid before release
Where does it go on the BAS?	Pre-filled at label 7A; claimed back at label 1B in the same month
Can a non-resident apply?	The eligibility list has no residency condition; lodging monthly through an Australian agent, on a standard registration, named as importer, you may qualify

1. Who is eligible for deferred GST, and what does the application actually test?

The ATO’s list is short and every item on it is checked. To be eligible you must have an ABN; be registered for GST; lodge your BAS online and pay electronically; lodge your BAS monthly; be importing goods for home consumption; and, if you are in a GST group, have a representative who is also registered for the scheme. You may be refused if your returns, BAS lodgments or payments are not up to date, or if you or anyone relevant to the application has been convicted or penalised by a court in the past three years for offences relating to taxation, customs, the inaccurate description of goods, trade practices, fair trading or defrauding a government.

Behind the list is a regulation. Section 33-15.03 of the GST Regulations 2019 says the Commissioner must approve once satisfied that the entity is registered for GST, has an ABN, is not an undischarged bankrupt (if an individual), has a tax period of each individual month, has an approved group representative where that applies, has given any bank guarantee required, and will be able to lodge and pay as the scheme requires. The Commissioner may refuse an applicant under external administration, one with a relevant conviction in the prior three years, or one that has, itself or through a related entity, an outstanding tax-related liability or return. “People relevant to the application” are the public officers, directors, office bearers, partners and trustees.

Three of those items catch overseas sellers:

Monthly means monthly before you apply. “If you are currently lodging quarterly, you must change to monthly GST reporting before you lodge your application”, and the change “will not take effect until the start of the next quarter. This means you won’t be eligible to defer GST on your imports until the start of the next quarter.” Elect monthly on 10 November and your first monthly period is January; the November and December containers pay at the wharf.
Standard registration, not simplified. A simplified registration cannot claim GST credits, so a deferred liability on it would have nothing to offset it. For a non-resident the standard lane means an ABN obtained through supplies connected with Australia; our article on simplified versus standard registration sets out that choice.
The customs side has its own condition. The regulation only defers GST on goods “entered for home consumption by computer”, and the Border Force says it plainly: “The ICS does not allow deferral on entries that are lodged manually.” Declarations go through the Integrated Cargo System, by a licensed broker or your own digital certificate, with your ABN quoted as owner.

2. The deferred GST application form: NAT 75136, the eleven-question eligibility check, and how you’re told

The form is the ATO’s “Application for approval to defer GST on imported goods”, numbered NAT 75136 on the ATO’s page (the downloadable PDF itself is stamped NAT 75163-08.2019). It is an online PDF form, saved to a computer and completed in Adobe Acrobat, and it runs the eligibility check first: “Answer the following 11 questions to determine your eligibility before applying online.” Only if you pass does the application section open.

The eleven questions, as the form puts them:

Do you have an ABN?
Are you registered for GST?
Are you an authorised contact at the Integrated Client Account level you are requesting DGST for? “For the application to defer GST to be approved you must be an authorised contact at the correct level.”
Do you lodge your business activity statements online?
Are you lodging monthly? “You must be lodging monthly activity statements before you can apply.”
Do you pay your BAS liabilities electronically, by direct debit, direct credit or BPAY?
Are you a member of a GST group?
If so, is your GST group representative registered for deferred GST?
Do you, or a member of your group, have any debts with the ATO (BAS, income tax, FBT)?
Do you, or a member of your group, have any outstanding lodgment obligations?
Outside a group, the same debt and lodgment questions are asked of the entity alone.

Pass those and the application itself is brief: your GST branch and joint venture registration numbers, if you have either, and the convictions question: “In the last three years, have you or any other people relevant to this application been convicted or penalised by a court, whether in Australia or in another country, for offences relating to” taxation requirements, customs requirements, the misdescription of goods, trade practices, fair trading or defrauding a government. Answer yes and the ATO “may ask you to provide additional information about the nature of the offence or penalty before making a decision”. Then you “complete the application and submit via the portal”.

How you are told is in the regulation. Under section 33-15.05, an approval comes as written notice and “takes effect on the day specified in the approval”. A refusal must state the reasons and your right to object under Part IVC of the Taxation Administration Act. The ATO does not publish a processing time, so plan on the start date in the notice, not the day you lodged.

3. What changes at the border once you’re approved: the ICS, your ABN on every declaration, and what still gets paid

Approval links your ABN to the Border Force’s Integrated Cargo System, and from then on the deferral is automatic and total. In the ABF’s words: “If an entity has an ABN approved for deferral, the ICS automatically defers ALL GST payable on an import declaration … You are not able to elect to defer GST on specific import declarations. If you are approved to defer, then GST is deferred on all lines for every import declaration.” What is not deferred is customs duty: “it is payable prior to the goods being delivered into home consumption.”

Four things to know about the mechanics:

Scope. Every entry for home consumption, at import or later out of a licensed warehouse, and amended declarations where GST is payable. Not covered: goods cleared on a self-assessed clearance (low value) declaration, TRADEX goods diverted into home consumption, temporary imports, and wine equalisation tax or luxury car tax.
What a month captures. Declarations “finalised during the month”, meaning the goods were released, which “may be different from the date that funds were debited” for duty. An amendment that reduces the deferred GST only flows to your BAS if the original was finalised in that same month; older reductions need an ATO request (section 4).
The hand-off. The ABF aggregates the month’s deferred GST for your ABN and passes it to the ATO, which puts it on your next monthly BAS, “due to be lodged and paid by the 21st day following the month in which the GST was deferred”, by electronic payment.
Reconciling it. The GST Deferral Report, “a breakdown of the GST Deferred amount required for the Australian Taxation Office Business Activity Statement”, is self-serve in the ICS or available from your customs broker, one report per broker if you use several.

Because the ICS defers on the owner’s ABN, the entity named as owner on the declaration is the entity whose BAS carries the 7A figure. A freight forwarder named in its own right means the GST is neither deferred to you nor creditable by you. Our article on who gets the import GST back covers that field.

4. Deferred GST on the BAS: label 7A, label 1B and the month-to-month arithmetic

Label 7A, “Deferred GST”, is pre-filled by the ATO from the Border Force’s figure. You do not calculate it. What you do is claim the credit: “on each monthly BAS, when you are entitled to a full GST credit for the taxable import, you should be claiming the full amount of the deferred GST as a credit on your BAS at label 1B (matching the pre-filled DGST amount at label 7A). The liability for DGST should always be offset on the BAS for the same month.” Label 8A is 1A plus 7A; label 9 is 8A less 1B.

Here is a month for Mei, a Singapore company selling homewares through an Australian marketplace from stock in a Melbourne 3PL. She holds an ABN and a standard GST registration, and an Australian tax agent lodges monthly for her. One consignment lands in October: customs value A$27,000, freight and insurance A$3,000, duty nil on this line, so the value of the taxable importation is A$30,000 and the deferred GST is A$3,000. October sales were A$44,000 including GST, and she bought A$5,500 of Australian services including A$500 GST.

Label	October
G1 total sales	A$44,000
1A GST on sales	A$4,000
7A deferred GST (pre-filled)	A$3,000
8A (1A + 7A)	A$7,000
1B GST on purchases (A$500 + A$3,000 deferred)	A$3,500
9 payable (8A − 1B)	A$3,500 by 21 November, electronically

Without the scheme the same month is A$3,000 to the Border Force before the container is released, then a BAS showing 1A A$4,000, 1B A$3,500 and A$500 to pay. The total is the same A$3,500. The difference is that none of it left at the wharf, and on a quarterly cycle that A$3,000 would have waited up to four months for its credit, with about A$9,000 out the door at the peak. That is the whole of the scheme’s value: timing, not a saving.

Three rules for keeping the label clean:

Fix 7A at the source. “If you identify an error in the pre-filled DGST amount at label 7A on your BAS … you will first need to contact either your customs broker or the ABF”, and the correction is an amendment to the finalised declaration in the ICS. A reduction for a declaration finalised in an earlier month also needs a request to the ATO through Online services, per BAS period, with the amended declaration or the Deferral Report and a note of whether you claimed the original amount at 1B.
7A is an import assessment, not a BAS item. The deferred amount “does not form part of the net amount on that activity statement”; it “forms part of the assessment made on the importation of the goods”. The BAS cannot be used to re-decide it.
Lodge on time, pay on time. Late lodgment or a payment-plan default can see you withdrawn, after which “the ABF will keep your goods until you pay the GST” and you apply again, possibly with a bank guarantee of one and a half times your highest monthly deferred GST in the prior twelve months.

Our first BAS article covers the rest of the statement; the only label this scheme adds is 7A.

5. Can a non-resident seller get into the deferred GST scheme?

The eligibility list has no residency condition, and neither does the regulation. What a non-resident has to clear is the lodgment condition. The ATO’s page on standard registration for non-residents says: “You cannot lodge electronically from outside Australia and may need to engage an Australian registered tax agent”, and “the best way to lodge your BAS is through an Australian registered tax or BAS agent.” Lodging through a registered agent using Online services for agents is one of the channels the scheme’s own page lists as lodging online. So a non-resident on a standard registration, with an Australian agent lodging monthly and paying electronically, and with its ABN quoted as importer on every declaration, may qualify.

The checklist for an overseas seller, in the order the questions bite:

Standard registration on an ABN, obtained through supplies connected with Australia (stock in a fulfilment centre or 3PL is the usual reason). Simplified registration has no credits and nothing to offset 7A.
A monthly tax period, elected early enough that the quarter boundary falls before the container you want to defer.
Online lodgment and electronic payment through an Australian agent, since Online services for business “is only available to Australian resident businesses”. The authorised-contact question is where this is tested.
Your entity named as owner on every import declaration, lodged electronically by your broker with your ABN. The deferral attaches to that ABN and the 1B credit depends on it.
A clean record: no outstanding Australian returns or debts, which for a new registrant usually means the first BAS lodged on time.

What the scheme will not do is rescue a seller whose declarations are in the forwarder’s name or whose registration is simplified; in both cases the 7A line has nowhere to land.

Where it’s worth getting help

The free path is the form itself: answer the eleven questions honestly, and if they all come back yes, lodge the application and wait for the written notice.

The judgment calls are these:

Sequencing. The monthly election takes effect from the next quarter and approval from the date in the notice; neither is the day you decided. Lining both up with the shipping calendar is the difference between deferring the next container and paying at the wharf for two more.
Portal access from overseas. The authorised-contact question and “submit via the portal” assume someone can act at the right account level; for a non-resident that is normally the registered agent, set up before the form is opened.
The declaration field. Every entry has to carry your ABN as owner. One consignment lodged in the forwarder’s name is a 7A figure that never arrives and a credit nobody can claim.
The monthly reconciliation. 7A is pre-filled from someone else’s data. Matching it to the Deferral Report, and routing corrections through the ICS rather than the BAS, is the routine that keeps you in the scheme.

That’s the difference between doing it and doing it right the first time: the seller approved before the January container with 7A and 1B cancelling every month, versus the one who elected monthly in November, paid at the wharf through the peak season, and then found the first 7A figure didn’t match the broker’s report.

If you’d like that looked at properly, our initial assessment form scopes it in about twelve questions, including how you lodge now, who clears your goods and when the next container lands, without needing a meeting. If the registration itself is still open, the GST registration check takes two minutes.

FY 2026–27. General information, not tax advice for your circumstances. The eligibility, application and BAS rules are the ATO’s and the Australian Border Force’s published settings at 12 October 2026; the regulation text is Division 33 of the GST Regulations 2019 as read on that date. The ATO publishes no processing time for the form. The A$75,000 GST registration turnover threshold is not indexed and may change; confirm the current figure.