Statutory filings every Australian employer must make
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Every Australian employer has a fixed set of statutory filing and reporting obligations that sit alongside the act of paying staff. Miss them and you face penalties, interest charges and, in some cases, director liability. Here is what you need to lodge, when and with whom.
Single Touch Payroll reporting
Single Touch Payroll (STP) is the core reporting mechanism for Australian employers. Each time you run a payroll — whether weekly, fortnightly or monthly — you must transmit a payroll event to the ATO through STP-enabled software. The submission includes each employee's gross earnings, tax withheld and superannuation information for that pay period, as well as year-to-date totals.
At the end of the financial year you must finalise your STP data by 14 July. Finalisation replaces the old payment summary process and populates each employee's income statement in myGov. You do not send employees a group certificate; instead, you mark the income statements as "tax ready" through your payroll software. Employees cannot lodge their personal tax returns with accurate pre-fill data until you complete this step, so the 14 July deadline matters to your workforce as well as to the ATO.
PAYG withholding obligations
Income tax in Australia is progressive and collected through Pay As You Go (PAYG) withholding. As an employer you calculate the correct withholding amount for each employee based on the ATO's tax tables, deduct it from their gross pay and hold it on their behalf.
That withheld tax must be remitted to the ATO on a regular cycle — monthly, quarterly or annually — depending on the size of your withholding obligations. Small employers generally report and pay quarterly; larger employers do so monthly. The ATO assigns your reporting frequency based on your annual withholding, and it can change as your headcount grows. Withholding figures are reported through your STP submissions, but the actual payment of withheld amounts is a separate obligation with its own due dates.
If an employee has a HECS/HELP debt, you are also required to withhold an additional amount on top of standard income tax. HECS/HELP repayments are calculated on a banded scale applied to the employee's repayment income. The employee's tax file number declaration or a separate study and training support loan form tells you whether this obligation applies.
Superannuation guarantee payments and reporting
The Superannuation Guarantee (SG) requires you to contribute 12% of each eligible employee's ordinary time earnings to a complying superannuation fund. Contributions must be paid at least quarterly — by the 28th day following the end of each quarter — directly to the employee's nominated fund or, if no fund is chosen, to your default fund.
Superannuation is reported through STP alongside salary and tax data, but the reporting of a contribution and the actual payment to the fund are separate acts. A contribution only counts as paid on time when the money clears in the fund, not when you record it in your system. If you miss the quarterly deadline, you lose the tax deduction for that contribution and must lodge a Superannuation Guarantee Charge (SGC) statement with the ATO and pay the SGC, which includes interest and an administration fee.
Fringe benefits tax returns
If you provide fringe benefits to employees — company cars, entertainment, gym memberships, certain expense reimbursements — you may have a fringe benefits tax (FBT) liability. The FBT year runs from 1 April to 31 March. If you have a liability, you must lodge an FBT return and pay the tax owing by the due date, which typically falls in May for self-lodging employers (later if lodging through a tax agent).
FBT is assessed on the employer, not the employee. The taxable value of benefits is also reportable through STP or on payment summaries for high-income employees, which affects their adjusted taxable income for other purposes.
Business activity statements and payroll tax
Your regular Business Activity Statement (BAS) brings together GST, PAYG withholding and, where applicable, PAYG instalments into a single lodgement with the ATO. The payroll-related component — PAYG withholding — must reconcile with your STP submissions.
Payroll tax is a separate, state and territory-based obligation administered entirely outside the ATO. Each jurisdiction sets its own rate and annual wages threshold above which the tax applies. If your Australian wages exceed the relevant threshold in any state or territory where you employ people, you must register with that revenue office, lodge returns on a monthly basis and pay an annual reconciliation. Thresholds and rates vary by jurisdiction, so if you operate across multiple states, you may have obligations in more than one place simultaneously.
Record-keeping requirements
Underlying all of these filings is an obligation to keep accurate payroll records. The Fair Work Act requires you to retain pay records and leave records for seven years. Those records must be legible, in English and available for inspection if requested. They form the evidence base for any audit, employee dispute or underpayment investigation, so the integrity of your records is as important as the timeliness of your lodgements.
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