What happens if you take the A out of BAS?

I remember long ago when I used to sit down and do my taxation in one afternoon.

Pretty easy to work out that when you earn no income you pay no tax. Honestly, no income.

None of these tax effective schemes for me, those were the days when I worked as an AMP agent and spent my summer evenings talking to 17 years olds who I'd collared in a factory unit earlier in the day.

Mum and Dad would glare at you as you talked to their son about the benefits of putting money into a fund for their retirement, realising that their pimply offspring was likely to end up richer than them.

You'd see this glaze appear over his face as he suddenly realised that this was necessarily going to limit the number of slabs of beer he could buy in a week. Compound interest? Pig's bum - give me a compound hangover any day.

I then spent the daylight hours figuring what to do about the missed premium from the apprentice I'd signed up four weeks before who'd decided that new extractors on the Torana was much more important than my "lapse rate".

Anyway back to the present. Hot on the heels of calculating I was in a position to personally fund Peter Reith's phone bill over the next few weeks, I received my first BAS statement. Innocuous little envelope the BAS statement. Sure I'd had the 24 books and numerous videos along the way.

Ever watched one of the videos? Up there amongst other best sellers such as the "Jenomi Overlocker Instruction Tape" and "new ways to use your toaster". These tapes are rippers. Give me the SBS weather map any day, at least it heralds good news for someone in the country.

The videos are almost as exciting as the CD. Call me dumb, but it took me a moment to figure out it was software rather than a DVD or music. I stuck it in the car CD player expecting to hear a track from Michael Carmody and the Taxettes. Perhaps a cover version of "Ring of Fire" - in memory of your last tax audit.

Alas no, the sound it emitted was obviously data, kind of a cross between a very bad dose of flatulence and your fridge blowing up. Computer stuff definitely. Computer stuff from the tax man that you stick into your computer with a modem installed. Yeah right….

So I pulled out the form from the envelope and had a look over it. When I voted for this stuff, I distinctly remember someone telling me that it was simple. Put down the GST you charge, deduct the GST you paid and expect a cheque back from Canberra in a few days.

WET Tax? No one said anything about a Wet tax. Does this mean that the next quarter we'll be paying a Warming Up Tax and then a Dry Tax. I know the ATO think they're good, but even they can't claim to be able to control the weather.

What's this stuff about Input credits ? Is this some sort of credit for Nocturnal activities? Bad news on that front, I guess I won't be saving too much tax in that department.

I rapidly came to the conclusion that this was going to be too hard and that I would need to resort to my old mate, Ali Barbar and his computer emporium. You remember him and his 40 thieves that run the local computer shop.

Ali tells me that there basically two programs that will do the job. MYOB and Quickbooks. Interesting nomenclature there, obviously designed to appeal to those with an attitude. Must give you a good feeling when your accountant rings up to enquire how things are going and you can say "Mind Your Own Business".

Ali tells me he thought it would be a good idea to try that on the ATO when they called about a small issue. He ended up with a Sales Tax, FBT and income tax audit all in the same week. He's since bought a Johnny Cash Album and keeps singing "I went down, down, down and the flames went higher….."

The other one, Quickbooks is the one I settled on. I'll be cornering Alan Fels at the FPA Conference about this one. Quickbooks? You gotta be joking.

This package is almost as slow as Money Management's accounts payable section. Perhaps if I sold up and a ran a lawnmower manufacturing business, it would all be a lot easier.

The fist stumbling block was getting it to understand that RCTI's exist. You know, Randomly Created Touched-up Income statements. We had to kludge the system by generating cash sales to our "customers".

The software now thinks I have a business where Paul Bachelor form AMP comes through my client shop with his shopping trolley and grabs a Mr. Z, followed by two Mrs. Gs and so on.

He then rolls up to my till, where we scan the client's bar codes. I generate a tax invoice for a few hundred, stick the clients in a plastic bag and say "Thanks for shopping at Nick's", have a nice day!

Sophisticated no, got the thing working, yes. Having loaded in the data over a few hours, I sat back and pushed the magic BAS button. The system whirred, the screen flashed, the speakers went "ping". Shock horror, what the ….?

The system shows I OWE the tax-man a few grand. Whoaa !, owe them money.

The TV adds said I was going to get money back, the whole thing was going to be easier.

I've decided that to make things truly representative, they're going to have to make one tiny modification to the BAS statement. Drop the A in the BAS and everything will fall into place.