Understanding your payroll obligations as an employer

Review your reporting and payment obligations to set yourself up for the year ahead.

Do you employ staff? Start the new financial year on the right foot by keeping on top of your payroll governance. This will help you manage your payroll administration and meet your obligations as an employer. This includes:

• reporting your employees’ tax and super information through Single Touch Payroll (STP) – enabled software each time you pay them
• correctly setting up your STP reporting – this includes mapping pay codes and allowances in your software
• withholding the right amount of tax
• reporting fringe benefits tax
• calculating super guarantee (SG) correctly
• paying your liabilities in full and on time.

Lodging your STP reports with the correct information on time each pay day ensures:

• we can prefill your electronic activity statements in ATO online services with correct information – so you only have to give us the information once
• your employees have accurate payroll information reported about them when they’re interacting with other government agencies, such as Services Australia
• you’re reporting your correct pay as you go withholding and SG liabilities to us.

If you’ve made a mistake, timely corrections are important. We have a list of STP reporting issues and errors and steps on correcting STP reporting on our website.

Good record keeping practices are important to help you meet your employer obligations.

Make sure you:

• regularly review your payroll processes, including payroll obligations to the ATO
• keep up to date with any changes that could impact your business.

Source: ATO