Your smaller employer clients will soon be asking (if they haven’t already) for information and guidance on transitioning to the new way to report tax and superannuation information to the ATO — Single Touch Payroll (STP).
Once an employer starts reporting through STP-enabled payroll software they will be sending tax and super information to the ATO each time they run their payroll and pay their employees.
Briefly, here is the STP process:
- an employer will run their regular payroll to pay their employees (eg weekly, fortnightly or monthly)
- their employee receives their salary or wages, and their payslip as they did previously
- the employer’s payroll software includes mandatory fields to capture the STP data, which includes year-to-date salary or wages and super information
- the STP data is sent to the ATO. The STP file is called a “pay event”. The way the file is sent will depend on the software. This may be directly, or through a sending service provider (a third party)
- the ATO receives the STP data and matches the information to the employer and their employees
- the ATO makes STP information available to employees through myGov, to employers through the Business Portal and to tax agents through the Tax Agent Portal. Employees can see their year-to-date tax and super information. Readmore
