Working papers, GST and the ATO
Practical notes for Australian tax agents — how a figure gets from a client's document to an ATO item, and what usually goes wrong on the way.
Working on a return right now? The free calculators run on the same rate book our working papers do — a page per financial year, no sign-up.
Why working papers come back from review
The partner isn't checking your arithmetic. They're checking whether they can get from a figure back to the document it came from without getting up and finding you.
Chasing documents is the real bottleneck
A return takes three hours of work and seven weeks of calendar. Nobody bills the seven weeks, nobody schedules them, and they decide how your season goes.