What is Single Touch Payroll (STP)?
- STP is a system that sends tax and super information from your STP-enabled payroll or accounting software to the ATO when you run your payroll.
- Your STP-enabled payroll software sends the ATO a report that includes the information they need from you, such as:
- salaries and wages
- pay as you go (PAYG) withholding
- super liability information.
What is changing?
- STP enabled products and software will be updated by 1 July 2026 to be ready to report both qualifying earnings (QE) and super liability.
- Super is calculated as 12%* of QE. QE is a new term which includes ordinary time earnings, all commissions, salary sacrifice contributions, and other amounts paid to extended definition employees (e.g. contractors paid for their labour).
- For most employers, QE won’t change the amount of super you pay. You can find more information on QE at ato.gov.au/QE.
*Norfolk Island is 11% from 1 July 2026 and 12% from 1 July 2027.
What should employers do now?
- Review your pay codes to work out which codes need to be mapped to QE.
- Check your product to understand what you need to do to report both QE and super liability amounts in STP.
- Wait for your DSP to let you know they have finalised updating their STP products. Subscribe to their website or newsletter for updates.
- Your DSP will let you know when they have updated their products to enable you to start reporting QE and meet updated SuperStream requirements. If you haven’t heard from them by May, contact them to find out when their software will be ready for this change.