Single Touch Payroll
Single Touch Payroll (STP) is a reporting change for employers, which will start from 1 July 2018 for employers with 20 or more employees.
It means employers will report payments such as salaries and wages, pay as you go (PAYG) withholding and super information to the ATO directly from their payroll solution at the same time they pay their employees.
The ATO is working closely with payroll software and service providers to help them get ready to offer STP reporting for their employer clients.
To find out if you need to be ready by then, you will need to count your employees on payroll on 1 April 2018.
The following employees need to be included in your calculations:
· full-time employees
· part-time employees
· casual employees who are on your payroll on 1 April and worked any time during March
· employees based overseas
· any employee absent or on leave (paid or unpaid)
· seasonal employees (i.e. staff who are engaged short term to meet a regular peak workload, for example, harvest workers).
Do not include:
· any employees who ceased work before 1 April
· casual employees who did not work in March
· independent contractors
· staff provided by a third-party labour hire organisation
· company directors
· office holders
· religious practitioners
For employees, it means they will be able to see more up-to-date tax and super information in ATO Online Services through myGov after 1 July 2018. They will be able to see their year-to-date pay, the tax that has been withheld from their pay as well as the super contributions their employer is liable to make throughout the year.
The Australian Government will expand STP to include employers with 19 or less employees from 1 July 2019 (subject to legislation being passed in parliament).
There'll be plenty of STP education and guidance material released soon. In the meantime, for more information please visit the ATO website here.
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