An overdue BAS attracts a failure to lodge penalty of one penalty unit for every 28 days it stays outstanding, capped at five units. From 1 July 2026, a unit sits at $364, so one statement tops out around $1,820. That penalty applies to each statement separately. Not to the year, and not to the account.
Interest is a separate charge on top, and it only applies if you owe money.
Most of the balances we see have nothing to do with unpaid GST.
How much is a BAS late fee?
Ten overdue statements at the cap is ten penalties. That arithmetic is how a business with no tax owing ends up looking at a balance north of $16,000.
Picture a sole trader who stopped lodging in early 2024 and finally opens the letters now. Two and a half years of quarterly obligations, so ten statements, every one of them well past 113 days and carrying the full five units. Nothing was collected on any of them because nothing was traded. The penalty exists because the paperwork never arrived, and it multiplies by the number of pieces of paperwork.
Nobody explains that part clearly, which is why the notice reads like a mistake when it turns up.
Which penalty unit applies to an old overdue BAS statement?
The unit in force when the statement fell due is the one that runs. Not the unit in force today.
Statements that went overdue between November 2024 and June 2026 accrue at $330 each block. Anything due from 1 July 2026 onward runs at $364. Older than November 2024 and you’re back at $313.
So a stack of overdue BAS doesn’t price uniformly, and working the total out statement by statement is the only way to know what you’re facing before you ring anyone. Worth knowing if you’ve been quoted a round number by someone doing rough maths over the phone.
The same unit rate drives the penalty for a late tax return, so a business that’s fallen behind on both has two meters running at once.
What happens if you pay BAS late but lodge on time?
Nothing, from a penalty perspective. General interest charge accrues on the unpaid amount, currently running a bit over 11% a year and compounding daily, but there’s no failure to lodge penalty attached because you met the lodgement obligation.
Which is the whole argument for lodging when the money isn’t there.
Paying BAS late costs you interest. Lodging late costs you interest plus up to $1,820 a statement. If cash flow is the problem, get the statement in by the deadline and sort the payment separately, because a payment arrangement is a conversation the ATO will have with you and a missing lodgement is not. The 2026 BAS due dates are worth having in the calendar for exactly this reason, even in a quarter you already know you can’t fund.
Why am I still getting BAS notices when I stopped trading?
This is the version that stings most, because the penalty is pure admin and nothing else.
An ABN with GST registration attached keeps generating quarterly obligations whether or not a dollar moves through the business. Sick and off the tools for eighteen months. Wound down a side business and never got around to the paperwork. A tradie who went PAYG for a builder and stopped invoicing under his own ABN, without cancelling it. A contractor who took parental leave.
In each case, the obligations kept ticking over behind the scenes with zero revenue underneath them, and a nil BAS is still a BAS.
An ABN isn’t dormant because you stopped using it.
If you’ve genuinely finished trading, cancelling the registration is the step that stops the meter. Do it, and then lodge whatever accrued in the meantime, because cancelling doesn’t retrospectively clear the periods that already fell due.
“They can’t take anything, I’ve got no assets”
This one comes up constantly, and it’s the most expensive belief in the set.
A BAS debt has no expiry date. It sits against the account, it absorbs any future refund you were owed, and it resurfaces the day you apply for finance or want to sell. We’ve watched a car loan get declined over a balance the owner had been meaning to ring about since the previous winter.
The version that lands hardest involves estates. An administrator we dealt with spent three years unable to distribute a cent to beneficiaries until the ATO was satisfied. The debt outlived the person who owed it. Where an unpaid balance is already in collection, the escalation follows a fairly predictable order, and almost every step of it is triggered by silence rather than by the size of the number.
Can you get an overdue BAS penalty remitted?
Yes, more often than people assume. Remission isn’t a favour you ask for once and accept the answer.
Lodge the statements first. The ATO won’t look at remission while the obligation is still outstanding, so the request has to follow the catch-up rather than replace it.
Then make the argument properly. From what we’ve seen and what business owners report, front-line staff have a ceiling on what they can remit, and anything above it goes to a review team. The reasoning that tends to work is straightforward: nothing was gained by the delay, and no tax was owed underneath it. Reasonable circumstances plus no benefit derived is the shape of a successful request.
It isn’t guaranteed, and the terms can bite. One case we’re aware of had the penalties waived on the condition that the $22,000 principal was cleared inside 30 days, with no payment plan offered. Relief, but not the kind you can budget around.
What if your BAS agent was the one who didn’t lodge?
Safe harbour provisions in the Taxation Administration Act can remove the failure to lodge penalty entirely where a registered agent dropped the ball.
Three things have to hold. The agent was registered at the time. You gave them everything they needed in reasonable time. The failure wasn’t reckless or deliberate on your part.
That first condition catches people. Plenty of bookkeepers prepare BAS without being registered to lodge it, and the TPB register takes about a minute to search. If your agent isn’t on it, safe harbour isn’t available to you, which is a reason to check now rather than after a late BAS statement has already accrued.
How to lodge a missed BAS
Start by finding out what’s actually outstanding, because the number of overdue periods is usually not the number people remember. ATO online services lists every unlodged obligation by period, and your agent can pull the same list.
Then reconstruct. Bank feeds, invoices, receipts and payroll records for the periods concerned, which is the moment the five-year record retention rule stops being theoretical. Xero and MYOB will both take historical data and produce activity statement figures for closed periods, though the coding work is where the time goes if the books were never kept properly in the first place.
Lodge everything, including the nil periods. Partial catch-up leaves the penalty meter running on whatever you skipped.
Then deal with the money. A first payment arrangement is straightforward to get. Defaulting on one is worse than never having had one, because your payment history sits on the file and shapes every conversation afterwards.
Get the overdue statements in first
If you’ve stopped opening the letters, the balance is growing while you’re not looking at it and the fix starts with lodgement, not payment. We work with Melbourne small businesses across trades, hospitality, retail and professional services to reconstruct the periods, get every outstanding statement lodged, and put the remission argument together properly before the debt conversation starts.
Speak with us about your overdue BAS, and we’ll work out where you actually sit.
What happens if you pay your BAS late?
Interest accrues daily on the unpaid balance from the day after it was due, at a rate a little over 11% a year. No failure to lodge penalty applies as long as the statement itself went in on time.
How much is a BAS late fee?
$364 for each 28-day block the statement is overdue, to a maximum of five blocks, so roughly $1,820 for a small business on a statement more than 113 days late. Medium entities pay double that. The rate that applies is the penalty unit in force when the statement fell due, so older statements are calculated at the lower rates that applied at the time.
What if I miss a BAS payment entirely?
Lodge anyway, then ring and arrange payment. The ATO is far more patient with a business that has engaged than with one that has gone quiet.
How far back can overdue BAS go?
There’s no limit. Obligations keep accruing for as long as the ABN and GST registration are active, which is why businesses that stopped trading years ago sometimes surface with a decade of unlodged statements.
Do I have to lodge a nil BAS?
Yes. A period with no activity still has a lodgement obligation, and the failure to lodge penalty applies to a nil statement the same way it applies to any other.
