Australian payroll deadlines and the employer calendar
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Running payroll in Australia means meeting a series of fixed deadlines spread across the year. Miss one and you risk penalties, ATO scrutiny, or disgruntled employees — so knowing the calendar in advance is the most practical thing you can do.
Single Touch Payroll: every pay run, every time
Single Touch Payroll (STP) is the backbone of Australian payroll reporting. Each time you pay your employees — whether weekly, fortnightly or monthly — you must report that pay event to the ATO on or before the payment date. There is no batching reports up to send later. The ATO receives salary, tax withheld and superannuation information in real time, which means errors surface quickly and corrections need to be made promptly through an updated STP submission.
If you use payroll software, STP reporting is typically built into the pay-run process. If you are running payroll manually or through a third-party provider, confirm who is responsible for actually lodging the STP file, because the obligation sits with you as the employer regardless.
End-of-year finalisation: 14 July
At the end of each financial year, you must finalise your STP data for every employee. The deadline is 14 July. Finalisation tells the ATO that the figures you have reported throughout the year are complete and correct. Once you submit, employees can see their income statement in myGov and use it to lodge their own tax returns.
If you miss the 14 July deadline, your employees cannot finalise their tax returns until you act. The ATO may also issue a failure-to-lodge penalty. For the 2026/27 year now underway, your finalisation is due 14 July 2027 — but the finalisation for 2025/26 should already be lodged.
Superannuation: quarterly due dates
Superannuation Guarantee contributions must be paid to a complying super fund at a rate of 12% of ordinary time earnings. Contributions are due quarterly, and the due dates are:
- 28 October — for the quarter ending 30 September
- 28 January — for the quarter ending 31 December
- 28 April — for the quarter ending 31 March
- 28 June — for the quarter ending 30 June (note: this is earlier in the year than you might expect)
Missing these dates does not just mean a late payment. You lose the tax deduction for those contributions and become liable for the Superannuation Guarantee Charge (SGC), which includes the unpaid super, an interest component and an administration fee. The SGC is calculated on a broader base than ordinary time earnings, so it almost always costs more than simply paying on time.
Some employers choose to pay super more frequently — monthly alongside payroll — which reduces the risk of a large quarterly shortfall and makes cash flow easier to manage.
PAYG withholding and Business Activity Statements
PAYG withholding — the income tax you deduct from employee wages — must be remitted to the ATO on a schedule that depends on your withholder category. Most small employers lodge and pay monthly via their Business Activity Statement (BAS), with payment due 28 days after the end of each month. Larger withholders may be required to pay more frequently. The ATO assigns your category based on the total amount you withhold annually, so check your current classification if your headcount has changed.
Your BAS also covers GST if your business is registered for it, but the payroll-specific obligation is the PAYG withholding amount. Keep these figures reconciled against your STP reports — discrepancies between the two are a common trigger for ATO review.
Employee-level obligations throughout the year
Beyond the statutory lodgement dates, a few employee-level items require attention at predictable points:
HECS/HELP repayments. If an employee has a study debt, you are required to withhold additional amounts on a banded scale above certain income thresholds. Employees declare their debt on their Tax File Number declaration or through myGov. Withhold the correct additional amount from each pay — do not wait until year end.
Annual leave. Under the National Employment Standards, full-time employees accrue four weeks of annual leave per year. While there is no single annual deadline attached to this, you need to track accruals accurately in every pay run. Employees who leave the organisation are entitled to a payout of unused annual leave, and that payout must be processed in their final pay.
Medicare levy. The 2% Medicare levy is factored into the tax withheld using the standard ATO withholding tables. No separate payment or lodgement is required from employers — it flows through your normal PAYG withholding process.
Keeping ahead of the calendar
The most common payroll compliance failures in Australia are not caused by ignorance of the rules — they come from poor internal processes. A simple employer payroll calendar, mapped out at the start of each financial year with super due dates, BAS lodgement dates and the 14 July STP finalisation deadline, removes most of the risk. Build in a buffer of a few days before each due date to allow for bank processing times, particularly for superannuation payments, which can take two to three business days to clear into a fund.
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