Australian payroll year-end: a checklist
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
End-of-year payroll in Australia means finalising your Single Touch Payroll data and submitting it to the ATO by 14 July. That deadline applies to most employers, and missing it can trigger ATO follow-up and penalties.
What "year-end" actually means in Australian payroll
The Australian income year runs from 1 July to 30 June. Once 30 June passes, you have a short window — until 14 July — to lodge your STP finalisation declaration. This tells the ATO that the year-to-date figures reported through STP for each employee are complete and correct. Employees then see a "Tax ready" status in their myGov account, which is what allows them to lodge their personal tax return.
If you have closely held payees (such as family members employed in a private company), a separate, later deadline may apply — check with the ATO or your tax agent for that specific situation.
The pre-finalisation checks
Before you hit finalise, work through these checks to avoid having to amend later.
Gross earnings and PAYG withholding
Reconcile total gross wages paid during the year against your general ledger. The PAYG withholding you remitted to the ATO should match the total withheld shown in your STP data. Discrepancies here are the most common cause of amendments.
Superannuation
From 1 July 2026, the Superannuation Guarantee rate is 12% of ordinary time earnings. Confirm that every employee has been paid at least that rate for the full year, contributions have been sent to a complying fund, and no payment deadlines were missed during the year. Super is reported through STP but paid separately to funds — the two need to agree.
Medicare levy
The Medicare levy is 2% of taxable income, and it is factored into PAYG withholding calculations automatically. Your obligation here is simply to confirm the correct withholding rates were applied to each employee throughout the year, particularly if any employee had a withholding variation in place.
HECS/HELP repayments
If any employees provided a tax file declaration showing a study debt, their withholding should have included an additional compulsory repayment amount on top of standard PAYG. Check that these amounts were applied consistently. The repayment is calculated on a banded scale based on the employee's repayment income — it flows through payroll but is not remitted separately to the ATO; it sits within the overall PAYG withholding amount.
Terminations and final pays
If employees left during the year, confirm their final pays were processed correctly, including any unused annual leave paid out. Under the National Employment Standards, employees are entitled to four weeks' annual leave per year (pro-rated for part-year service), and this must be paid out on termination. Redundancy payments follow a separate scale based on years of service — check that any redundancy amounts were calculated correctly and that the right tax treatment was applied, as genuine redundancy payments have concessional tax treatment up to certain limits.
New starters and TFN declarations
Make sure every employee who started during the year submitted a TFN declaration or completed the ATO's online equivalent. Where no TFN was provided, withholding should have been applied at the no-TFN rate. Flag any gaps before finalising.
Lodging the STP finalisation
Once your checks are done, the process through your payroll software is straightforward. You submit a finalisation indicator against each employee's record. This is not a separate form — it is a flag sent through your existing STP-enabled software confirming the data is complete.
You do not send payment summaries to employees. Since STP became mandatory, employees access their income statement directly through myGov. Your obligation is to make sure the data is accurate before you finalise, because once employees start lodging their tax returns, amendments become more disruptive.
If you find an error after finalising, you can submit an amended finalisation. It is better to do this promptly than to leave incorrect data in place.
After 14 July
Once you have finalised, keep your payroll records for the required period — generally five years. These include payslips, TFN declarations, withholding records and super payment receipts.
This is also a good time to update your payroll setup for the new year. Check that any changes to award rates, salary reviews or new superannuation guarantee obligations are reflected in your system before the first pay run of 2026/27. Running a quick audit of employee classifications — casual versus permanent, contractor versus employee — at year-end is practical housekeeping that avoids problems compounding into the next year.
For businesses managing payroll across multiple countries, the Australian year-end sits within a broader compliance calendar that requires careful coordination — how Mellow runs payroll across six countries on one platform explains how that can be structured without duplicating effort.
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