The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) requires employers to make a finalisation declaration by 14 July each year, or as soon as possible to ensure employees can access their information to complete their income tax return.
An STP finalisation event notifies the ATO that this financial year’s payroll is complete, that the figures provided are final, and that no further payments will be made to employees in this financial year.
For those with 20 or more employees, you should be reporting closely held payees each payday along with arm's-length employees. The finalisation due date for closely held payees is 30 September each year.
For smaller employers with less than 20 employees, who only have closely held payees, the payee's income tax return due date is the due date for end-of-year STP finalisation.
For those employers with a mixture of both closely held payees and arms-length employees, the due date is 30 September each year. If you can't make a finalisation declaration by the due date, you will need to apply for a deferral.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can ensure your clients are prepared and ready to lodge their finalisation event(s) to the ATO using QuickBooks Payroll powered by Employment Hero.
It’s important to first do some housekeeping before a STP finalisation event is lodged to the ATO. We recommend completing the following checks and reconciliations to ensure all business and employee details are correct.
Table of contents:
