Single Touch Payroll

From July 1st 2018 all Australian Businesses that employ 20 or more staff will be required to report through Single Touch Payroll (STP). This will affect around 3% of Australia’s 2 million businesses.

The cut off for your headcount to find out if you will require STP is April 1st 2018. There are some exceptions being given to businesses with large swings in staff numbers or where they have little to no Internet access.

STP will report digitally, information regarding your payroll transactions directly to the ATO. This will mean that other reporting requirements (such as Payment Summaries) will no longer be required and also that Employees through their MyGov account will be able to see information during the year on their total Pay, PAY-G and Super. This will link through to help them with their tax returns as well.

Smaller Businesses may elect to take up STP if they wish, and there are plans to make them also comply perhaps as early as 2019.

Medium term it’s going to be a good change for businesses but in the short term it’s going to mean that you will require STP compliant software and that in some cases there may be charges for processing these transactions, and/or costs in getting new software.

The details of what and how the process will work are still being finalised, let’s hope that the ATO and their partner Gateways are all up and ready in time for their deadline less than 8 months away.

More info can be found on the ATO website.