What is Single Touch Payroll (STP)?¶

Single Touch Payroll — usually shortened to STP — is the way you tell the Australian Taxation Office (the ATO) about the pay your employees receive. Instead of sending one big report at the end of the year, you send a small report each time you pay your staff.

The report goes to the ATO on or before the day you pay your employee. It carries the pay, the tax you held back, and the super you owe. The ATO adds these up for each employee across the whole financial year.

In one line

Single Touch Payroll means you report each pay to the ATO on or before payday, and the ATO builds up a running total for every employee.

Why this matters¶

STP replaces the old end-of-year payment summary. When you report each pay, your employee can see their pay, tax and super online, and the ATO already has the figures it needs at tax time. Getting the report right keeps those figures correct.

What you will learn¶

What Single Touch Payroll is
When a pay is reported to the ATO
What your employee sees in myGov after you report

Understanding the concept¶

STP works with your payroll. Each time you run a pay, your software builds a report called a pay event and sends it to the ATO. You send it on or before the day the payment is made.

The amounts in the report are year-to-date (YTD) totals — the running total for each employee since 1 July. So the ATO always sees the latest full picture for each person, not just the amount of one pay.

The report includes each employee's identity, their pay, the PAYG withholding (PAYGW — the tax you hold back and send to the ATO), any deductions, and their super. It also carries totals for the whole business.

For accountants & bookkeepers

The ATO matches each pay event to a payee record by ABN/branch (or Withholder Payer Number) / BMS ID / Payroll ID / TFN. The employee's ATO Online income statement shows a status of Year to date during the year, Not tax ready after 30 June until finalised, and Tax ready once the payer finalises. The ATO confirms once an amount is reported it should keep being reported in later pay events, even if it has not changed.

Example¶

Priya runs a small café and pays her one employee, Sam, every fortnight. On payday she runs the pay and lodges the pay event. The report tells the ATO Sam's pay, the tax withheld, and the super for the year so far. Sam logs in to myGov and sees the running totals climb after each pay. At the end of the year, Priya finalises, and Sam's income statement shows as Tax ready.

Common mistakes¶

Thinking STP is a once-a-year task — you report every pay run.
Expecting to see just one pay in the report — the amounts are year-to-date totals.
Assuming the employee gets a paper payment summary — with STP they view an income statement in myGov instead.

How this works in myaccountant¶

In the app — myaccountant builds the STP pay event from your pay run, so you never prepare a file by hand. You lodge STP per pay run from the pay-run screen. The report carries each employee's pay, tax and super as year-to-date totals.

Key points¶

STP is how you report each pay to the ATO on or before payday.
The amounts reported are year-to-date totals for each employee.
The report covers pay, PAYG withholding, deductions and super.
Employees view their totals as an income statement in myGov.
The income statement shows Tax ready once you finalise for the year.

Learn next¶

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

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