Your First BAS as an Overseas Seller: What Goes in Each Box (2026)

Your GST registration has gone through, and now the ATO has sent you a business activity statement with a due date on it. It looks like a form with forty boxes. For an overseas marketplace seller, three of them matter — and one of those three is where the 10% you paid at the border comes back to you.

The ATO’s default reporting method for businesses with GST turnover under A$10 million is called Simpler BAS, and its instruction is short: report G1 total sales, 1A GST on sales and 1B GST on purchases. That is the whole GST report.

Box	What goes in it	Where the number comes from
G1 Total sales	Your Australian sales for the quarter — what customers paid, GST included	The marketplace’s order or transaction report, not the payout
1A GST on sales	The GST inside G1: taxable sales ÷ 11	Your G1 figure
1B GST on purchases	Import GST you paid as the importer, plus GST on Australian fees and costs	Import declarations, Amazon’s tax invoices, supplier tax invoices
The net amount	1A minus 1B — you pay it, or the ATO pays you	Arithmetic

(General information for FY 2026–27, not tax advice for your circumstances. Every rule below was confirmed against ato.gov.au on 10 September 2026.)

1. Does a non-resident seller have to lodge a BAS — and what will the first one cover?

Yes, if you hold standard GST registration — the lane that comes with an ABN. The ATO sends you a BAS every quarter and you lodge it, even for a quarter with no sales. On simplified GST registration (an ARN, no ABN) you never see a BAS: you lodge a simplified GST return instead, and you can’t claim anything back.

The two lanes produce different paperwork, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re in before you start looking for boxes:

	Standard GST registration	Simplified GST registration
Your identifier	ABN	ARN (ATO reference number)
What you lodge	A BAS, quarterly or monthly	A simplified GST return, quarterly
How you lodge it	On paper, or through an Australian registered tax or BAS agent	Online services for non-residents
GST credits (import GST, fees)	Claimed at 1B	None — the ATO: you “can’t claim GST credits”
Who it fits	Stock held in Australia (FBA, a 3PL), or anyone who wants the credits	Low-value goods shipped direct, digital products

If your stock sits in an Australian fulfilment centre you’re in the standard lane, full stop — the ATO’s own worked example of a seller warehousing through a marketplace says it “will not be eligible for simplified GST registration”. This article is about that lane.

Four things about the first BAS catch people:

You don’t request it. The ATO’s words: when you register for an ABN and GST, “we’ll automatically send you a BAS when it is time to lodge”. Without access to the ATO’s online services — which, as section 3 explains, overseas sellers don’t have — that means a form in the post to the address on your registration, unless an agent is linked to your account.
It isn’t an income tax return. A BAS reports GST. It says nothing about profit, and whether you also owe Australian income tax is a separate test entirely.
It starts on your registration’s effective date. If your registration was backdated — because your Australian sales reached the A$75,000 threshold months before you registered — every quarter from that date needs its own statement. A registered business has to give a GST return for each tax period (GST Act s 31-5), so a backdated start can mean several statements at once. The A$75,000 turnover at which you may be required to register is not indexed; confirm the current figure.
A quiet quarter still gets lodged. The ATO: “Even if you have nothing to report for the period, you still need to lodge your BAS as ‘nil’ by the due date.” Pausing your Australian listings doesn’t pause the statements — only cancelling the registration does.

2. What goes in each box on an overseas seller’s BAS?

Three boxes: G1 is your Australian sales including GST, 1A is the GST inside them — divide by 11 — and 1B is the GST you paid on imports and Australian costs. Under the ATO’s Simpler BAS method those three are the whole GST report; on a paper statement, the sections you don’t need “can be left blank”.

G1 — Total sales

What your Australian customers paid you in the quarter, GST included. The form asks whether your G1 figure includes GST — mark Yes.

Three rules keep this number honest:

Gross, not payout. Amazon’s disbursement has already had referral fees, FBA fees, advertising and refunds taken out. G1 is the sales figure before any of that. Putting the payout here is the single most common error on a first BAS, and it understates both G1 and 1A every quarter it happens.
Australian sales only. The ATO tells you not to report “amounts received for sales not connected with Australia”. Your US, UK or EU marketplace revenue never goes near G1.
Sales from your Australian stock are yours; some direct-ship sales aren’t. Where the marketplace was responsible for the GST — low-value goods (A$1,000 or less) shipped to a consumer from outside Australia — the ATO treats the platform as the supplier, so those sales stay out of your BAS. Once the goods are sitting in an Australian fulfilment centre, the ATO is explicit that the seller “will therefore be responsible to charge GST on the sale”. More in does Amazon collect GST on Australian sales?

Two smaller points. Report in Australian dollars — the ATO says so for non-residents in the standard lane — which is easy for marketplace sellers, because Amazon.com.au sells in A$: use those figures, not your home-currency bank deposits. And GST-free sales, such as goods exported from your Australian stock, still go in G1; they simply add nothing to 1A.

1A — GST on sales

Australian prices include GST, so the GST in a A$110 sale is A$10. The tax is your taxable sales divided by 11 — not multiplied by 10%. On A$66,000 of sales that is A$6,000; the multiply-by-ten reflex says A$6,600 and overpays A$600 a quarter.

Any increasing adjustments — a correction that raises the GST on an earlier sale — are added here too.

1B — GST on purchases

This is the box that pays. For an FBA seller it draws on three sources, and you report only the GST in them, never the total purchases:

Import GST paid at the border. It’s 10% of the customs value plus any duty plus the international transport and insurance. You claim it in the BAS for the period you paid it — if you are the importer, which the ATO defines as having caused the goods to be brought to Australia for your own purposes and being named as owner, yourself or through your agent, on the import declaration. Your evidence is the finalised import declaration (an N10, or an N30 out of a customs-licensed warehouse) and the matching Home Affairs receipt; your customs broker can keep them for you. If your freight forwarder was named as owner in its own right, the ATO’s worked example ends: “no entity can claim a GST credit”. Check whose name is on the declaration before the container ships — see importer of record and the GST credit.
GST on Amazon’s fulfilment fees. For a non-resident seller, Amazon charges 10% GST on FBA storage, pick and pack, and shipping; referral fees, the subscription and advertising are GST-free. The GST on those fulfilment lines is yours to claim — read it off Amazon’s tax invoice, not the settlement summary. The full split is in GST on Amazon seller fees.
Australian suppliers. Prep centres, a local 3PL, your customs broker’s own fee — the GST on their tax invoices. For any purchase over A$82.50 you need a valid tax invoice to claim it.

Decreasing adjustments land here as well. A refund on a sale you reported in an earlier BAS gives you back the GST you paid on it — at 1B, in the quarter you give the refund, not by reopening the old statement.

And if a credit slips through, it isn’t lost straight away: GST credits can be claimed in a later BAS, within four years of the due date of the statement in which you could first have claimed them.

The boxes you leave alone

The rest of the form belongs to other obligations: W labels (tax withheld from wages paid in Australia), T labels (PAYG instalments — only if the ATO has told you to pay them), F labels (FBT), 1C to 1F (wine and luxury car tax) and 7C/7D (fuel tax credits). 7A only appears if you join the deferred GST scheme, which requires monthly online lodgment — it won’t be on a first quarterly statement.

3. How do you lodge — and pay — a BAS from outside Australia?

On paper, or through an Australian registered tax or BAS agent. The ATO says plainly that non-residents in standard GST “cannot lodge electronically from outside Australia”, because Online services for business “is only available to Australian resident businesses”. You pay by international transfer in Australian dollars, quoting your payment reference number.

That line from the ATO’s page for non-resident businesses changes everything else in this section, because most BAS guidance assumes you’ll click “lodge” in the ATO’s portal. From overseas, you have two routes:

Paper. The statement arrives by post. You complete it and mail it back in the pre-addressed envelope — or, if you’ve lost it, to Australian Taxation Office, Locked Bag 1936, Albury NSW 1936. International post runs inside the same 28 days, and paper-lodged statements never qualify for the agent due dates in section 4.
A registered tax or BAS agent. The ATO’s own recommendation for non-residents: “The best way to lodge your BAS is through an Australian registered tax or BAS agent.” The agent lodges electronically, sees the ATO’s messages about your account, and can use the later agent due dates from your second statement onward.

(There’s also an automated line for nil statements, 13 72 26, using your ABN and the statement’s document ID. It’s an Australian 13 number, and it can’t be used where certain labels — 7A among them — carry a pre-printed amount.)

Paying the ATO from overseas

Field	What goes in it
Bank	Reserve Bank of Australia, 65 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
SWIFT / bank identifier	RSBKAU2S
BSB	093 003
Account number	316385
Account name	ATO direct credit account
Field 70 (“details of payment”)	Your PRN — and nothing else

Your PRN (payment reference number) is what matches the money to your account; the ATO warns that any other text in that field delays processing. Four more rules from the ATO’s payment pages:

Send Australian dollars. Banks along the way usually deduct handling and exchange fees before the money arrives, and the ATO expects the full amount — so either add the fees on top or use a provider that doesn’t deduct them. The ATO has agreements with OFX and Xe, which validate your PRN and deliver the A$ amount without deducting cross-border fees.
Allow four business days. Payments “can take up to 4 business days” to reach your ATO account. Pay before the due date, not on it.
Cards work through Government EasyPay (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), with a card fee.
Foreign cheques don’t. The ATO can’t accept them.

When the BAS pays you

When 1B is bigger than 1A — a heavy restocking quarter, say — the result is a refund. The ATO pays BAS refunds into a nominated account that “generally … needs to be at an Australian branch”, held either in your business’s name or by a registered tax agent. For an overseas seller with no Australian bank account, that second option is usually the practical one.

4. When is a quarterly BAS due for an Amazon seller — and what does a real quarter look like?

A quarterly BAS is due on 28 October, 28 February, 28 April and 28 July — the December quarter already has an extra month built in. Lodged electronically by a registered agent, three of those move later for 2026–27: 25 November, 26 May and 25 August. Your first statement may not get the later date.

Quarter	Months	Due if you lodge	Registered agent lodgment program 2026–27
Q1	Jul–Sep 2026	28 October 2026	25 November 2026
Q2	Oct–Dec 2026	28 February 2027	28 February 2027 (no extension)
Q3	Jan–Mar 2027	28 April 2027	26 May 2027
Q4	Apr–Jun 2027	28 July 2027	25 August 2027

If a due date falls on a weekend or public holiday, you have until the next business day. The ATO’s two-week extension for businesses that lodge online doesn’t help from overseas, for the reason in section 3.

The first-statement catch. The agent program’s later dates apply to statements generated after the previous one was lodged electronically. The ATO’s words: “If it’s your client’s first activity statement, or their previous activity statement was lodged by paper, then you may need to lodge by an earlier due date.” Plan your first BAS for the 28th — whoever lodges it.

Monthly is the other cycle: due on the 21st of the following month. Businesses under A$20 million can choose it, and it’s compulsory for the deferred GST scheme — the one that stops you paying import GST at the border at all. See the deferred GST scheme.

A real quarter, worked

A UK homeware brand sells through Amazon.com.au with stock in an Australian fulfilment centre. Its standard GST registration took effect on 1 July 2026. Its first BAS covers July to September:

	Amount	Goes in
Australian sales, what customers paid (GST included)	A$66,000	G1
GST inside those sales: A$66,000 ÷ 11	A$6,000	1A
Import GST on one container — 10% of A$35,000 (customs value + duty + freight + insurance); the brand is named owner on the import declaration	A$3,500	1B
GST on FBA storage, pick and pack and shipping — Amazon tax invoice, A$9,000 + GST	A$900	1B
GST on an Australian prep centre’s invoice, A$1,000 + GST	A$100	1B
Referral fees (A$9,900) and advertising (A$4,000) — GST-free to a non-resident	—	nowhere
Total GST credits	A$4,500	1B
Net amount: A$6,000 − A$4,500	A$1,500 to pay	due 28 Oct

Two versions of the same quarter show what the common errors cost:

The payout in G1. After referral fees, FBA fees and advertising, the quarter’s payout is about A$42,200. Put that in G1 and 1A comes out near A$3,840 — roughly A$2,160 of GST under-reported, and the same gap repeats every quarter until someone spots it.
A second container. Ship another A$35,000 of stock in the same quarter and 1B rises to A$8,000. The BAS turns into a A$2,000 refund — which is why the refund route in section 3 is worth setting up before you need it.

The credits are also why standard registration pays for a seller with stock here: without it, that A$4,500 in 1B would simply be gone. For a walk-through of the same four numbers on a different quarter, watch What is a BAS? Australia’s quarterly filing explained.

If a statement is late

For a small business the base failure-to-lodge penalty is one penalty unit for every 28 days (or part) the statement is overdue, capped at five. A penalty unit is A$364 for infringements on or after 1 July 2026, so the cap is A$1,820 per statement; larger businesses face multiples of that. Unpaid amounts also attract interest. The ATO says it generally won’t issue a late-lodgment penalty notice where the late statement results in a refund or a nil amount — unless the penalty was applied before you lodged — which is a reason to lodge a late nil statement promptly, not a reason to skip it.

Doing it yourself, or not

You can run this yourself: fill in the paper statement, post it to Albury, and wire the balance to the Reserve Bank with your PRN in field 70. For a clean quarter the arithmetic is an afternoon.

What an agent changes here is unusually concrete, because most of it is written on the ATO’s own page for non-residents. Electronic lodgment you can’t do from overseas. Later due dates from your second statement. Refunds landing in an Australian account when you don’t have one. And the part that actually decides whether the numbers are right: turning settlement reports into a gross G1, putting the right Amazon fee lines — and only those — into 1B, and checking that your name, not your forwarder’s, is on every import declaration before the credit is lost.

A registered agent’s job is to make the quarter boring: three boxes right the first time, lodged on time, refunds somewhere you can reach them, while you run the business.

General information only, current for FY 2026–27 and verified against ATO sources on 10 September 2026. It is not tax advice for your circumstances. The A$75,000 GST registration threshold is not indexed — confirm the current figure before relying on it. Epic Tax is a registered tax agent that lodges quarterly BAS for overseas sellers; if you’d like yours handled from the first statement, get in touch before the first due date, not after.