GST on cafe and restaurant sales in Australia is 10%. BAS is usually quarterly for small hospitality businesses, monthly for larger ones. The real work is a bookkeeping rhythm that makes each BAS a review, not a reconstruction.

Why BAS keeps sneaking up on hospitality

GST for cafes in Australia is conceptually simple. 10% on most sales, claim back 10% on most business purchases, lodge a BAS every quarter (or every month, once you’re big enough). The ATO publishes clear guidance. Most cafe and restaurant operators have the gist of it within a few weeks of opening.

What operators struggle with isn’t the rule. It’s the bookkeeping rhythm that supports it. Daily sales hit across cash, card, and delivery platforms. Supplier invoices arrive on weekly cycles. Wages and super flow through payroll. If any of those channels lag the others, BAS becomes a month-end scramble dressed up as a tax problem.

We’ve watched dozens of Australian cafe and restaurant operators treat BAS as a quarterly crisis instead of a monthly output. The difference between those two experiences isn’t tax knowledge. It’s bookkeeping cadence.

This guide is the plain-English starting point: what to track, what’s taxable vs not, how the BAS cycle actually works in practice, and the monthly rhythm that makes BAS feel boring.

What’s taxable at 10%

For a typical cafe or restaurant in Australia, most revenue is taxable at 10% GST:

  • Dine-in food and drink. 10%.
  • Takeaway prepared hot food. 10%.
  • Takeaway drinks (coffee, juice, soft drinks). 10%.
  • Delivery platform sales. 10% on the gross menu price.
  • Alcohol. 10% GST plus separate excise where applicable.
  • Cover charges, booking fees, private event charges. 10%.
  • Merchandise, branded retail items. 10%.

A narrow set of food items are GST-free: fresh bread, fresh fruit, milk, plain tea and coffee beans sold for home consumption. These matter for cafes that do retail-style sales of beans or cold sandwiches prepared offsite, but for dine-in and prepared food the default is taxable.

When you’re not sure, check the ATO’s guidance on GST and food for the detail. Hospitality’s grey-area items are a small fraction of revenue for most businesses.

For restaurant bookkeeping in Australia, the rule of thumb is simple: if it’s prepared and sold for on- or near-immediate consumption, assume 10%.

GST credits: what you can claim back

GST paid on business purchases can be claimed as a GST credit on the BAS, reducing the net GST you owe. Common credit categories for hospitality:

  • Food and beverage suppliers (when registered for GST)
  • Packaging, disposables, cleaning supplies
  • Kitchen equipment and leasing
  • Rent (if the landlord is registered)
  • Utilities
  • Marketing, accounting, professional services
  • POS, accounting software, booking platforms

What you can’t claim:

  • Purchases from non-registered suppliers (no GST charged, nothing to claim)
  • Private-use portion of mixed-use expenses
  • Entertainment with narrow exceptions

Every claim needs a valid tax invoice from a registered supplier (GST-inclusive amount clearly marked, ABN visible, description, date). No tax invoice means no credit, even if the expense is genuine.

How BAS actually works for hospitality

Most small hospitality businesses lodge BAS quarterly, with a typical deadline 28 days after the end of the quarter. Businesses with GST turnover over $20 million must lodge monthly, and some choose to move to monthly voluntarily for cash flow reasons.

A standard BAS reports:

  • G1. Total sales (gross, including GST).
  • 1A. GST on sales (collected from customers).
  • 1B. GST on purchases (credits you can claim).
  • Net GST. The difference, paid to the ATO (or refunded).
  • PAYG withholding. Tax withheld from wages.
  • PAYG installments. Prepayments of your own income tax.

For a restaurant group that also has wages flowing through Single Touch Payroll (STP), the BAS is the moment every data stream has to agree. If payroll, sales, and purchases are clean, the BAS is fifteen minutes of review. If any one of those is messy, the BAS becomes a week of reconstruction.

The follow-up guide on BAS cycles for multi-location hospitality groups covers the additional complexity when you have outlets filing into a consolidated BAS.

The monthly rhythm that keeps BAS boring

A calm BAS comes from a boring month-end. The operators who dread BAS are the ones running a scramble at the end of each quarter. The operators who barely notice BAS file their quarterly return as a 30-minute review.

What the boring month-end looks like:

  1. Daily sales captured from the POS with channel breakdown (dine-in, each delivery platform, retail)
  2. Bank and card reconciliations current within the last 7 days, not batched at month-end.
  3. Delivery platform payouts reconciled against the platform statements by the 5th of the following month.
  4. Supplier invoices entered and matched to payments by month-end; no stack of unentered paper.
  5. Payroll run with STP reporting current.
  6. Month-end review. A short look at sales totals, GST collected, GST on purchases, and anything that looks off.

At the end of the quarter, the BAS is the sum of three clean months. No reconstruction. No guesswork.

Common GST and BAS mistakes

  • Netting delivery platform revenue. Booking only the net payout from Uber Eats, DoorDash, or Menulog understates sales, understates GST collected, and misses the GST credit on the platform commission. Book gross sales, platform commission as an expense, and reconcile the payout against the bank.
  • Missing tax invoices. No valid tax invoice means no credit, even for legitimate business expenses.
  • Treating tips as sales. Tips paid to staff (outside the POS transaction) aren’t GST-able sales. They should be segregated in the books.
  • Filing from bank statements only. The bank shows net payouts. GST is calculated on gross. The books need to capture both.
  • Leaving catch-up for the last week of the quarter. BAS is cheap when books are current, expensive when they aren’t. The cost is time and correctness, not just money.
  • Forgetting that alcohol sales carry excise on top of GST. Excise is a separate tax flow. Don’t fold it into COGS; keep it on its own line so margin and tax movement are both visible.

BAS-readiness checklist

  • Daily sales recorded with channel split
  • All GST-registered suppliers’ tax invoices captured
  • Delivery platform revenue booked gross, commission as a separate expense
  • Bank reconciliations current within the last 7 days
  • Platform statements reconciled by the 5th of the following month
  • Payroll run with STP current
  • Tips segregated from sales
  • Month-end review: G1 total sales, 1A GST collected, 1B GST credits, anomalies
  • Quarterly BAS filed from reconciled books, not rebuilt from scratch

Next step

If BAS feels like a monthly (or quarterly) fire drill in your business, the free books health check is the practical first step. It assesses how close the current bookkeeping rhythm is to BAS-ready and where it breaks down.

Last updated: April 2026.

This is general information, not professional tax advice. GST rules and BAS cycles change. Confirm current details with a qualified professional or the ATO before acting.