When the pre-filled wages or tax is missing¶

You open your Activity Statement and the wages and tax boxes — W1 and W2 — are empty, or they look too low. This usually is not a system fault. Those figures are built from your Single Touch Payroll (STP) reports, so if a pay did not reach the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), the pre-fill has nothing to show. The good news is that the fix is straightforward: sort out the payroll, then make sure the figure matches your own records.

In one line

W1 and W2 are pre-filled from your Single Touch Payroll reports — if a pay was not reported, was late, or your software was not connected, the figure can be missing or short, so check your payroll and enter the correct amount from your records.

Why this matters¶

W1 is your total wages and W2 is the tax you withheld from them. If you lodge with these boxes blank or too low, you under-report — and you may still owe the amount you actually withheld. Understanding where the pre-fill comes from lets you spot the gap and correct it before you lodge, instead of fixing it afterwards.

What you will learn¶

Where the W1 and W2 pre-fill comes from
Why a pre-filled figure can be missing or too low
How to check your payroll and enter the correct figure from your records

Understanding the concept¶

Every time you pay staff, your payroll software reports the wages and the tax withheld to the ATO through Single Touch Payroll. The ATO explains that it uses those STP reports to pre-fill the wages and tax labels on your Activity Statement — W1 is the total wages and other payments, and W2 is the total tax withheld from them.

Because the pre-fill is built from what the ATO has received, it can only show pays that actually reached it. A figure can be missing or too low when:

A pay run was not reported through STP.
A pay run was reported late, after the statement was prepared.
Your payroll software was not connected to the ATO when the pay was run.

The ATO is clear that your own payroll records are the primary source, and that you should feel confident to correct the pre-fill so it matches those records. So a blank or low box is a prompt to check your payroll — not a figure to simply accept.

The fix is:

Check your payroll for the period the statement covers.
Make sure each pay was reported to the ATO through STP.
Enter or adjust W1 and W2 so they match your records before you lodge.

For accountants & bookkeepers

The ATO can only pre-fill from data sent through STP-enabled software, and some payments are out of scope or voluntary to report, so pre-fill is a convenience, not the source of truth. A later payroll report that only corrects a running year-to-date figure does not carry the period totals behind W1 and W2, so it will not flow through to the statement pre-fill. Always reconcile W1 and W2 back to the payroll records and correct the pre-fill to match before lodging.

Example¶

Jordan runs a small landscaping business and does one pay run a month. Payroll for the month went through fine, but a software update quietly signed the business out of its ATO connection, so that pay was never reported through STP.

When Jordan opens the Activity Statement, W1 and W2 are blank. Rather than lodging empty boxes, Jordan checks the payroll records, sees the pay run and the tax that was withheld, and makes sure the pay is reported to the ATO. Jordan then enters the correct wages at W1 and the correct tax at W2 — matching the payroll records — and lodges with confidence.

Common mistakes¶

Lodging with W1 and W2 blank because "that is what the form showed".
Assuming the pre-fill is always complete — it only reflects pays the ATO received.
Forgetting that a late or unconnected pay run will not appear in the pre-fill.
Overwriting a correct pre-filled figure with a guess instead of your payroll records.

How this works in myaccountant¶

In the app — myaccountant can flag when the wages and tax pre-fill looks missing or lower than your records, so you know to check your payroll before you lodge. You can then enter or adjust the W1 and W2 figures to match your own records.

Key points¶

W1 is your wages and W2 is the tax withheld from them.
Both are pre-filled from your Single Touch Payroll reports.
A missing or low figure usually means a pay was not reported, was late, or was not connected.
Your payroll records are the primary source, not the pre-fill.
Check your payroll and enter the correct figure before you lodge.

Learn next¶

General information only — not tax, super or financial advice.

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