Single touché payroll compliance is now required for businesses with 5 to 19 employees. Click here to read information from the ATO about it. Included is this information on how it works:
STP works by sending tax and super information from your payroll or accounting software to the ATO as you run your payroll.
When you start reporting:
- you will run your payroll, pay your employees as normal, and give them a payslip
- your pay cycle does not need to change (you can continue to pay your employees weekly, fortnightly or monthly)
- your STP-enabled payroll software will send us a report which includes the information we need from you, such as salaries and wages, pay as you go (PAYG) withholding and super information
- see our employer reporting guidelines for a full list of payments that must be reported through STP.
You will be reporting super liability information through STP for the first time. Super funds will also be reporting to us. They’ll let us know when you make the payment to your employees’ chosen or default fund. This is an important step toward making sure employees are paid their correct entitlements.
The way STP information is sent will depend on the software you use. STP reporting will be offered in one of the following ways with:
- an end-to-end solution, which allows you to run your payroll and send the STP information directly to us from your software
- a solution which allows you to run your payroll and send the STP information through a third party sending service provider (SSP) which is integrated into your software
- a solution that allows you to run your payroll and requires you to send the STP information through a third party sending service provider (SSP) outside your software.
ATO systems will match the STP information to our employer and employee records.
Your employees will be able to see their year-to-date tax and super information in ATO online services, which can only be accessed through myGov. Their data is updated every time you report (each pay day for most employers). Without STP reporting, employee data is only reported at the end of the financial year.
If you make mistakes in your STP report, you can correct it in your following report. We won’t penalise you for making mistakes you correct.
At the end of the financial year, you’ll need to finalise your STP data. This is a declaration to the Commissioner to state you have completed your reporting for the financial year.
It is important newsagents are across this and live already.; Putting it off is not an option.
For what int is worth, in my own shops our POS software is connected to Xero and Xero manages STP requirements.