If you have 19 or fewer employees, you have until 31 July 2020 to make an STP finalisation declaration. This declares you have provided all required information for the financial year through your Single Touch Payroll (STP) reporting. This does not apply to employers with closely held employees who are not yet required to report via STP.
Before you make a finalisation declaration, you need to make sure that your STP information is correct. Once this is confirmed you can make a finalisation declaration by providing a finalisation indicator for an employee (and directors, etc.) as part of your STP reporting. Once you have provided the finalisation indicator for the employee, the ATO will pre-fill the employee’s income tax return and display the information as ‘tax ready’ in myGov.
When you have reported and finalised your employees’ information through STP, you are exempt from:
- providing payment summaries to your employees
- lodging a payment summary annual report.
For payments to your employees that were not reported through STP, you still need to:
- give a payment summary to your employees
- provide the ATO with a payment summary annual report for these payment summaries.
Don’t forget to tell your employees:
- you are no longer required to provide them with a payment summary for the information you’ve reported and finalised through STP
- they can access their year-to-date and end-of-year income statement online through myGov or talk to their registered tax agent
- to wait until their income statement is ‘Tax ready’ before lodging their tax return
- to check their personal details and if necessary update your records and the ATO (incorrect personal details may prevent them from seeing their STP information).
More information can be found on the ATO’s website.