Compliance to ATO Single Touch Payroll Rules and Regulations
Here is a link to the rules of reporting STP to the ATO: https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/hiring-and-paying-your-workers/single-touch-payroll/in-detail/single-touch-payroll-employer-reporting-guidelines/rules-of-reporting-through-stp.
As an employer you have a legal obligation to report every pay event to the ATO on or before the pay day (date paid). The pay day is either the payment date stipulated in the electronic transaction to your financial institution or, if you did not specify a date for payment, the date you intend to make the payment into your employee's bank account. This is an ATO requirement since the inception of Single Touch Payroll in July 2018, and this has not changed. It is the employer's responsibility to ensure that these pay event are submitted in line with the legal requirements.
In addition, since 1st July 2023, the ATO introduced PAYG withholding Prefill of Labels W1 & W2 in the electronic Activity Statements using STP reported employer amounts. This means that the STP batches sent to the ATO will contribute to this prefill for the BAS. See: Attache Single Touch Payroll: Prefilling of payroll Information to W1 and W2 in the ATO Portal Electronic Activity Statement.
As a result, it is even more essential to report every pay event to the ATO on or before the pay day.
Attaché Customers NOT complying to the ATO Rules and Regulations for Single Touch Payroll
Attaché currently has a large number of customers who are still not complying to this rule. The ATO has, to date, not actively policed this.
However, before the ATO start introducing penalties and enforcement letters, we are making some changes to the Attache product, to help encourage employers to be compliant. These changes are designed to assist you in meeting your obligations to the ATO by preventing you from skipping submissions that are legally required to be made.
If you have unsubmitted batches pertaining to prior financial years, and your prior financial years have been balanced and finalised, mark these prior financial year batches as not required.
If you don’t have errors in your batches but have simply failed to submit some current year STP batches, you will need to start submitting the batches now from oldest to newest.
If you are experiencing errors with your current FY STP batches, please create a support case at the time the error occurs if assistance is required so that you can meet your obligations to submit on or before payday.
📌 Note: If you have a large number of historic batches and you are contacting us for assistance months after the event, this makes it much more difficult for us to assist you. Trying to clear historic issues that occurred months prior may require chargeable consulting to resolve. Issues are best resolved at the time of the problem occurring!
Whilst we will endeavor to help wherever possible, these onus of following the ATO requirements for STP reporting rests with the employer, not on the software provider.