Payroll

Payroll is the compliance job that never pauses. A BAS comes once a quarter and a tax return once a year; payroll comes every fortnight, and each run has to be right at the time, because the reporting goes to the ATO the same day you pay people.

It also became harder on 1 July 2026.

What changed on 1 July 2026

Payday super. Super used to be quarterly, due 28 days after the end of each quarter. Now, every time you pay qualifying earnings, the super on them has to be received by the employee's fund within seven business days.

Three things follow from that, and they catch businesses that had payroll under control:

• Received, not sent. The clock stops when the fund has the money and can allocate it – not when your payroll run finishes, and not when your clearing house debits you.
• Wrong member details mean it was never received. A stale fund number bounces the contribution back while the deadline keeps running.
• The ATO's Small Business Superannuation Clearing House has closed. If that was your method, you needed a replacement before July.

The rate is 12% of qualifying earnings – a slightly wider base than the old ordinary time earnings, picking up commissions, salary-sacrificed amounts and payments to contractors treated as employees for super. Our superannuation guarantee explainer sets out the detail, and the payday super checklist walks through what to check in your own setup.

What we do

We also handle the things that sit beside payroll rather than inside it: payroll tax returns where you cross a state threshold, workers compensation declarations, and the reconciliation between what payroll reported and what the accounts say – which is where discrepancies get found before the ATO finds them.

What it costs to get wrong

Payroll is unusual in how directly its mistakes reach people personally.

Late super becomes the SG charge. Not just the shortfall – notional earnings accruing daily, an administrative uplift, and a choice loading where the fund rules were not followed. Being a day late costs materially more than the super did.

Unpaid PAYG withholding and super can be taken from a director personally, through a director penalty notice. Those two, and GST, are the three company debts that reach through the company to the people running it.

Intentional underpayment of wages has been a criminal offence since 1 January 2025, carrying imprisonment as well as very large fines. It is aimed at deliberate conduct rather than honest errors – but "we did not realise" is a much more comfortable position when your records show a system that was set up properly and reconciled regularly.

Payroll tax is a different tax

People assume payroll tax is the tax withheld from wages. It is not – that is PAYG withholding, which goes to the ATO. Payroll tax is a state tax on your total wages bill, once it passes a threshold, and it is administered separately in every state.

In New South Wales the threshold is $1.2 million of annual wages, at a rate of 5.45%. Two things surprise people:

• Grouping. Related businesses are added together. Two companies under common control, each comfortably under the threshold, can be over it as a group.
• Interstate wages. If you pay wages in more than one state, your NSW threshold is apportioned, and every other state wants its own return.

If you are approaching a threshold, or have staff in more than one state, that is worth modelling before it happens rather than after the first assessment.

How this fits with everything else

Payroll sits directly on top of your bookkeeping – the pay run posts into the accounts, and reconciled books are what make the quarterly numbers agree. It feeds your BAS, which reports the PAYG you withheld. And for anyone setting up with their first employee, business setup covers registering for PAYG withholding and workers compensation before the first payday rather than after it.

Our pricelist carries the current fees.