top of page

"Stay Under the GST Threshold" The Advice That Costs Women Their Freedom

Misogyny in financial advice

‘Stay under the GST Threshold, it’s easier.’This advice gets handed to women so often it should come with a password and a clandestine handshake.

Quick context for anyone who hasn’t lived inside a Australia small business: that threshold is the revenue line where a business has to register for GST and lodge a BAS. It exists to manage tax admin, not to manage your ambition or your life. So when accountants (most of them from firms led by men) suggest women deliberately keep their revenue below that line to avoid paperwork? What they’re really saying is:

👉 'Grow later. Stay smaller. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t earn too much too fast.'

And yeah, it might save a few minutes… but it quietly steals tens of thousands of dollars in profit - money that’s meant to fund your choices, your freedom, your control, your life, your peace.



30 women, big plans, one brutal pattern


Two weeks ago, I stood in a room with 30 women plotting huge futures for 2026.


There were visions. Pilgrimages. Retreats. Studios. Speaking tours. Boundaries-setting. Team redesigns. Four-day weeks. More money for less stress. Less work for more life.


I was absolutely fangirling. I’ll admit it. One woman casually dropped that she takes clients on a yearly journey and calls it 'business pilgrimage', and I had a small identity crisis about how boring finance can sound.


But then the day wrapped. We had a drink. Stories started flowing, and a theme emerged:


  • ’My accountant told me to stay under the GST Threshold.’

  • ’It felt easier.’

  • ’I won’t have to charge GST.’

  • ’I won’t have to do a BAS.’

  • ’I don’t want the hassle.’


And each time, I felt the same internal facepalm.


Because here’s the unsexy reality check: you can’t build independence, autonomy, or a business that pays you a real entrepreneurial wage while deliberately capping your revenue.


GST was never the issue - your potential was


The finance industry works tireslessly to keep women small, quiet and broke.

To be abundantly clear, the GST Threshold has one actual job:

  • It tells the Australian Taxation Office when they can expect quarterly paperwork from you.

That is literally it.

It is not:

  • a business maturity ranking

  • a profitability marker

  • your maximum earnings limit

  • a growth strategy

  • or a sign you can’t handle the basics

So when the finance industry frames it as something women should avoid? It quietly equates earning more money with being harder to support.

And that narrative is gendered, harmful, and flat-out false.

A business earning $75,000 doesn’t take home $75,000.Take out costs, time, tools, software, subscriptions, lifecycle interruptions, admin hours, and you’d be lucky to scrape together a livable wage from the scraps.

We cannot scale a business model built on artificial constraint.


What this advice really costs

Imagine a founder who took the advice:

She keeps her revenue at $74,900.She’s proud - until she realises she still owes GST on purchases, still has tax obligations, still has unreconciled accounts, still does admin manually, still procrastinates hires, still does her own books at midnight, still underprices based on vibes, still resents the client scope she accepted out of panic, still lacks cash reserves for tax, and still ends up last in line for paying herself.

Nothing got simpler.Just smaller.

And small doesn’t buy choices.

Profit does - the kind of profit that pays you weekly, funds outsourced admin, de-risks your cashflow, gives you breathing room, lets you decline bad-fit clients without spiralling emotionally, and enables a lean team so you can finally have oversight, not another dependent.

This advice doesn’t prevent admin stress. It prevents women from earning enough money to make their own decisions.



Boring finance rhythms that actually work

Here’s the part we all deserve to hear from the finance world instead:

  • Calculate the cost of your time. It is not free.

  • Notice the subscriptions draining your hours or cash. Kill them.

  • Automate the admin. Let robots be the village.

  • Reconcile your accounts weekly. Visibility is oxygen.

  • Put money aside weekly for your BAS. Protect your cash from yourself.

  • Lodge a quarterly BAS through Xero. Ten minutes, tops.

  • Once a year in June, a BAS agent checks your work. Prevention, not rescue.

None of it is complicated.But all of it is empowering.



Want to crack past $75k revenue nexzt year and join the top 12% of women-owned businesses clearing $100k+?

Let me hand you the no-BS action plan now, so you can start strong in January without negotiating autonomy from the supply cupboard of your own business.



Business Reset Intensive


A fast, personalised CFO-level diagnostic for women running small service-based businesses who are capable, ambitious, and completely over feeling confused, overwhelmed or underpaid.



 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page