If you miss a super contribution
You should fix this as soon as possible by paying outstanding amounts to your employee's super fund. Even if you can't pay the full amount, paying a partial amount to the fund will reduce the super guarantee charge that you will become liable to pay.
Where your super contribution is unpaid, paid late, underpaid or paid to the wrong fund, you are liable to the super guarantee charge and we will issue you a notice of assessment. Once we issue you a notice of assessment, the super guarantee charge is to be paid to the ATO. This includes notional earnings and may include an administrative uplift amount (up to 60% of the total of the unpaid super and notional earnings).
Sometimes our records may show that you have missed a payment due to incorrect or incomplete information reported to us. Find out more about inconsistent data.
Example: effect of paying late contributions
Juliet has 100 employees. She pays each of them $1,000 of qualifying earnings on 4 November 2027 (the QE day). Each employee is entitled to $120 of super guarantee.
Under Payday Super, the super guarantee contributions are on time if they are received by the employees' funds, with enough information to allocate them, by 15 November 2027.
Juliet pays contributions in full and on time for 70 of her employees. However for one of these employees, Juliet makes the contribution to her default fund rather than the employee's chosen fund, which contravenes the choice of fund requirements.
For the remaining 30 employees she does not pay on time.
Juliet is assessed for super guarantee charge 50 days after the due date of 15 November 2027 (that is, in January 2028). The maximum administrative uplift percentage (60%) applies because she has not lodged a voluntary disclosure statement for this QE day and has had a previous ATO-initiated assessment for an earlier QE day.
The table below shows her maximum super guarantee charge for 2 situations:
- Juliet pays the $120 contribution for each of the remaining 30 employees on 10 December 2027 (25 days late). These contributions are received by the employees' funds on the same day.
- Juliet does not pay late contributions for the remaining 30 employees.
|
Component |
1. With late contributions |
2. Without late contributions |
|---|---|---|
|
Total individual final super guarantee shortfalls |
$0 |
$3,600 |
|
Total notional earnings |
$24.74 |
$49.65 |
|
Administrative uplift amount |
$14.84 |
$2,189.79 |
|
Choice loading |
$30 ($120 × 25%) |
$30 ($120 × 25%) |
|
Total |
$69.58 |
$5,869.44 |
To find out how the amounts in this example are calculated see Making a voluntary disclosure for Payday Super.
End of example
Missing a contribution in the first year of Payday Super
Under our compliance approach for the first year of Payday Super, we will not be applying compliance resources to investigate employers who are:
- paying super guarantee for each payday
- correcting errors as soon as they can.
We will focus our compliance resources on employers who don't:
- fix errors quickly
- attempt to move to a payday contribution frequency
- pay super guarantee at all.
Find out more about our compliance approach for the first year.
Voluntary disclosure statements
Under Payday Super, you're no longer required to lodge a Super Guarantee Statement with us to report shortfalls if you miss a payment or pay late.
You can instead choose to lodge a voluntary disclosure statement for unpaid, underpaid or late super guarantee contributions or contributions made to the wrong fund. A voluntary disclosure statement can only be lodged before you receive a notice of assessment for super guarantee charge, and it can reduce the amount of super guarantee charge you are liable to pay. If you wish to increase the amount of the super guarantee shortfall in a previous voluntary disclosure statement you lodged for a QE day, you can provide this information to us using the voluntary disclosure form.
For more information on voluntary disclosure, see Making a voluntary disclosure for Payday Super.
If you receive an assessment of super guarantee charge
If you've received an assessment of super guarantee charge, the amount owing is due and payable to the ATO on the day that the assessment is made. This is usually the day you receive the notice of assessment. General interest charge accrues on unpaid super guarantee charge, and is not deductible.
You can contact us to request a payment plan to pay any outstanding super payments once you have received an assessment. A payment plan will not stop any late payment penalties from being imposed. Late payment penalties cannot be remitted and they are not deductible.
For more information see What happens if you don't pay the super guarantee charge.