Deputy Commissioner Emma Rosenzweig, Payday Super Program
Speech at the AFR Workforce Summit 2026
Sydney, 28 April 2026
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Introduction
Good afternoon and thank you for having me today.
I have been invited here to talk about Payday Super. This is an important, once-in-a-generation reform which will contemporise Australia’s world-class retirement savings system. This is not just a reform that will impact a payroll team – you will need integration between your payroll, HR and tax compliance functions, and your audit and risk committees should be paying attention too.
As everyone in the room is aware, paying super is an important part of being an employer, as it provides for your workers in their retirement.
We estimate that more than $6 billion of super contributions are unpaid each year and Payday Super is designed to reduce that. It is more than just getting employers to pay more frequently – we are creating a system that makes it easier to get things right for those who are trying to do the right thing and for those who are deliberately not complying, it is much harder to hide.
Let’s start with what’s changing with Payday Super
From 1 July 2026, employers will be required to pay their employees’ super guarantee (SG) for each payday and quarterly SG payments will be a thing of the past. Our data shows that over 40% of employers were paying more frequently than quarterly before Payday Super was announced, and in the current financial year that has already shifted to 45%.
The basics that your payroll teams will need to be across are:
- Contributions must be received by their employees’ superannuation fund within 7 business days after payday. This includes contractors if they’re deemed to be employees for SG purposes.
- The 7-day clock doesn’t stop if the contribution is rejected by a fund. Therefore, it’s important to be working now on remediating any errors you are currently getting with your super contributions, and that you are set up to respond quickly to errors from 1 July.
- It is also critical that you have good quality information when you are onboarding new employees. This is where your HR teams come into the picture, as the additional grace period for SG payments for new employees is only 20 days after their first pay.
- There will be changes to your Single Touch Payroll reporting to ensure that the ATO gets the data we need to confirm that you’re paying the right amount. Your software developers are updating their products right now and will give you more information when they are ready.
We have published fact sheets, checklists, webinars and videos to provide you with detailed information about the changes. I encourage you to make sure your HR and payroll teams review our support material.
So, how is the ATO making it easier to get things right?
While Payday Super makes changes to obligations, it also presents some enormous opportunities. One of the things that my team and I have committed to, in bringing this policy to life, is to use those opportunities to address some of the common irritants and challenges involved in the payment of superannuation.
We have worked closely with employers, the super industry and digital service providers to design solutions that are practical, scalable and build on the investments already made in existing digital infrastructure.
For example, one of the most common employer concerns is that a liability continues until a contribution reaches the super fund. Contributions traverse through multiple steps, like payroll software, clearing houses, payment processors and superannuation gateways, each with different processing timeframes outside of an employer’s control.
Payday Super will help streamline the process, as it mandates that all super funds are able to receive contributions via the 'New Payments Platform' (NPP). Many of you will recognise the NPP from Osko payments in personal banking, which enable near-instant transfers. Several funds have already enabled this capability with the support of their clearing houses and are seeing employer contributions arrive on the same day they are paid. This provides greater confidence for employers, a more efficient and lower-cost system, and more time to identify and resolve errors. We encourage more digital service providers and clearing houses to enable the NPP functionality, and employers should speak with their service providers to ensure they are accessing the best available services.
We are also aware that errors in the system are a big irritant for all parties and a huge driver of costs, and we currently see a 2% error rate for about 200 million contribution transactions annually. Although Payday Super will naturally increase the number of super contribution transactions, to match the number of payroll transactions (to around 500 million annually), Payday Super will also significantly reduce the amount of errors getting into the system. It will do this through a new service called the 'Member Verification Request'.
This service was developed with the support of industry and uses existing infrastructure to minimise build complexity and cost. But most importantly, it will allow payroll or HR teams to verify the information you have gathered to make sure a super contribution is all accurate before you submit it through. This includes things like checking the details of new employees before making the first payment and when an employee changes funds – it enables any errors to be fixed up front. Industry feedback suggests this could eliminate up to 90% of current errors, delivering significant savings for all parties. All super funds will be required to offer this service, with digital service providers and clearing houses expected to make it available to employers.
Inevitably some errors will still occur, but super funds will also improve error messaging to help employers resolve issues more easily and will be required to reject contributions they cannot allocate within 3 days. This avoids funds spending time and cost manually correcting poor‑quality data and supports a contemporary payday model, that identifies errors early so they can be fixed quickly.
What about when something goes wrong?
We know that payroll is complex and inflexibility within the current day legislation has been a barrier against fixing errors quickly and simply, and for the consequence of errors to be proportionate.
Similarly, you may have heard that under Payday Super there is also no flexibility to account for mistakes. I can assure you that this is not the case. In fact, the legislation is designed to give much more flexibility for employers to fix errors quickly. Where an employer realises there has been an underpayment of super, they will be able to just pay the late amount to the super fund to reduce the SG charge liability – there is no longer an obligation to lodge an SG statement with the ATO. There is an option to lodge a voluntary disclosure statement, but this is not mandatory. This is where your payroll teams should be working with your tax teams to consider the context of the underpayment and assess your own tax risk appetite.
I also want to be clear about how the ATO will approach Payday Super compliance.
While Payday Super will give us the ability to identify discrepancies like never before, we will not take compliance action on every data mismatch. We will always apply the law when we look at an employer’s affairs, but our focus will be on helping employers get it right, especially in the first year of Payday Super.
With 1 July looming, we know that some employers may not have left themselves enough time to make the changes needed within their payroll systems and business processes to accommodate Payday Super. But while they may not be entirely ready on day one, there is still an expectation employers are paying their employee’s super. Employers who demonstrate they are doing everything they can to pay SG contributions in line with payday cadences, are likely to be low-risk and won’t be the focus of ATO compliance activity. This also applies to those employers who make honest mistakes and take steps to rectify them quickly.
The ATO’s main compliance focus will continue to be on those who do not pay at all or deliberately underpay their employees and this is where Payday Super data will help us to prevent significant unpaid entitlements from accumulating, where there is clearly no intention to comply.
The ATO’s compliance approach for the first year of Payday Super is published on ato.gov.au – just search for our practical compliance guide PCG 2026/1. This explains the risk-based approach and how we will classify employers as low, medium or high risk based on their SG payment behaviour. And, as I mentioned earlier, the PCG is very clear that we won’t be applying compliance resources to employers who pay super on payday and fix errors quickly.
We will monitor how the system is bedding down and consider whether we need formal advice about our compliance approach beyond this first year.
In closing – what should employers be doing now and where can they go for help?
There are only 43 business days left in the lead up to 1 July 2026, so our key message to employers is to act now and be ready. How much change is required will vary depending on existing processes.
My top 3 calls to action are:
- Review processes to support more frequent super payments and ensure that you have involved the whole of your business in understanding what this will mean, including your HR teams, your tax teams and your leadership group – don't just leave it to payroll.
- Secondly, consider and make plans for potential cash-flow implications during the transition year – in particular, it’s a good idea to review your expected pay cycles for July, where there may also be a final quarterly super payment due on 28 July.
- And finally, ensure systems and software are ready as updates are rolled out by providers and that you’ve fully considered the features offered by your provider.
I’ll now open to questions.