Australia

AgentBook in Australia#

Tax estimate#

If you're a sole trader, your income tax estimate uses the real ATO individual brackets plus the Medicare Levy. If you've registered a Pty Ltd company, AgentBook instead applies the flat company tax rate to your net profit — a fundamentally different calculation from personal brackets, and the Tax Dashboard notes this explicitly so the figure isn't mistaken for a personal estimate. Set your entity type once in Tax Dashboard → Settings.

Mileage#

The ATO's cents-per-km method applies — a flat rate per kilometre. The ATO caps this method at a maximum annual distance (beyond which its logbook method applies instead); AgentBook doesn't enforce that cap automatically today, so keep an eye on your total if you're a high-mileage driver.

Payroll#

Employees get PAYG withholding calculated correctly, plus the Superannuation Guarantee (paid on top of gross pay, not withheld from it — Australia's equivalent of an employer retirement contribution). Year-end forms use the Payment Summary format.

Single Touch Payroll (STP) isn't lodged automatically. AgentBook calculates PAYG and Superannuation Guarantee correctly for your own records, but doesn't report each pay run to the ATO in real time the way STP-enabled payroll software does. You'll still need STP-enabled software (or your BAS/tax agent) to report to the ATO as required by law.

GST#

Set Registered for GST? in Settings → Business. It drives two things at once:

Only a GST-registered business may charge GST or issue a document headed "tax invoice", so if you're not registered, answer No — otherwise you're collecting 10% from your clients that you have no BAS on which to remit. Holding an ABN is not the same as being registered for GST; plenty of sole traders have one without the other.

The unanswered state keeps charging GST rather than guessing, because guessing the other way would stop a genuinely registered business collecting GST it still owes at BAS time. AgentBook prompts you to answer instead: it watches your rolling twelve-month turnover and raises an alert when you're near or over the ATO's $75,000 compulsory-registration threshold. Registering with the ATO is still your step — AgentBook won't do it for you, and it won't flip the setting on your behalf once you cross.

You can still override the rate on an individual invoice (an export sale, say).

Bank sync#

Bank sync works for Australian tenants via Basiq, a CDR-accredited (Consumer Data Right) Australian data provider — connect your bank the same way US and Canada tenants connect via Plaid. Link your account from Business Profile → Bank (for business expenses) or from Personal Finance (for personal accounts, part of the Personal Insights add-on), authorize access on Basiq's hosted consent screen, and your accounts, balances, and transactions sync automatically, with transactions auto-matched against your invoices and expenses just like Plaid-connected accounts.

You can still log expenses manually or from a receipt photo if you'd rather not connect a bank — everything else (invoicing, reports, tax estimate) works normally either way.

Per-diem#

Not available in Australia — and not because we haven't built it. A per-diem is a way to skip receipts, and the ATO's reasonable travel amounts only do that for an employee who received a bona fide travel allowance. As a sole trader you're not paying yourself one, so the exception never applies: you claim what you actually spent and keep the tax invoices.

Log meals and accommodation as expenses and snap the receipts — AgentBook will categorise them. If a trip runs six or more consecutive nights, the ATO also wants a travel diary, kept before the trip ends or as soon as possible after.

Getting set up#

Set your country to Australia, your state, and your entity type (sole trader or Pty Ltd) in Business Profile and the Tax Dashboard.

Next: Reports & tax