Applying for Commissioner’s Discretion: Refunds of Excess GST – How To Guide

• Excess GST can occur when incorrectly treating something as taxable and including GST in your business activity statement
• Excess GST cannot be refunded if it has been passed on to the customer in the price they paid for the sale and not reimbursed
• Passing on GST to the customer is generally assumed if a tax invoice includes an amount of GST
• If excess GST is reimbursed to the customer, a decreasing adjustment can be made to recover the excess GST included in earlier BAS
• If excess GST is not reimbursed, a refund can be requested from the Commissioner’s discretion
• There is no legal requirement to reimburse excess GST to customers
• An administration fee can be charged for processing reimbursements of excess GST

Source: ato.gov.au

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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