The rules you already know. Tax and BAS agents on the coast register with the Tax Practitioners Board like those anywhere else, and the state taxes clients ask about, such as payroll tax, land tax and transfer duty, belong to the Queensland Revenue Office. Our page for Brisbane accountants covers both, including how the TPB's registered tax practitioner symbol has to be displayed. The rest of this section is about what's different here.
More strata schemes than Brisbane. At the end of June 2026, Titles Queensland's figures put 14,093 community titles schemes in the Gold Coast local government area: more than Brisbane City's 13,621 and roughly a quarter of the 54,355 across the state. Each has a body corporate, and the Queensland Government's guidance says that at every AGM the body corporate must decide about auditing its accounts. Unless owners pass a special resolution that the year's statement of accounts not be audited, an audit has to happen, and the auditor must be independent (not a committee member and not the body corporate manager) and have appropriate qualifications and experience. Specified two-lot schemes don't need an audit, and under the Small Schemes Module the audit motion isn't compulsory. For a practice that audits schemes, that's thousands of committees facing the same decision each year, and a page that explains your process gives them somewhere to start.
Platform income from short stays. Since 1 July 2023, platforms that facilitate short-term accommodation, such as holiday rentals, have had to report what their suppliers earn to the ATO under the Sharing Economy Reporting Regime. Reports go in twice a year, by 31 January and 31 July. So for owners who let through those platforms, the ATO has the platform's figures as well as the owner's return. If you prepare those returns, a page for holiday-let owners can say what records you'll ask for and link to the ATO's own guidance, without the site trying to give tax advice itself.
Clients on both sides of the border. Coolangatta and Tweed Heads sit either side of the state line, and many people on the coast came from the south: at the 2021 Census, about 54,700 Gold Coast residents aged five and over (9.2%) had lived in another state or territory five years earlier, about 33,400 of them in New South Wales. A business with people on both sides may deal with the QRO and Revenue NSW. Queensland measures its payroll tax threshold on an employer's annual Australian taxable wages, so staff on the NSW side count too, and land tax on property in Tweed Shire is a matter for Revenue NSW, not the QRO. Time is the other difference: NSW runs daylight saving from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April, and Queensland doesn't.
Where you are, and where we are. Name the suburb you work from, whether that's Southport, Bundall, Robina, Varsity Lakes or Coomera, and the parts of the coast you see clients from. We're an Adelaide team at Ste 3/110 Hutt St and work with practices outside South Australia by phone and email, so nobody from our side visits your office. You send your services, registration details and photos of your people; we send back a draft link to review between appointments.
