Welcome and governance
The ATO Tax Practitioner Stewardship Group (TPSG) Co-chair welcomed members and ATO attendees to the first TPSG Tax Time 2026 meeting.
Members were reminded that the information shared in this meeting is ‘Limited’ in its distribution. These key messages have been pulled together to share publicly.
ATO updates
Frontline Services
- We have received 17,450 calls from tax agents so far, with an average wait time of 7 minutes and 51 seconds.
- We have received approximately 589,000 tax return lodgments, which is around 9% lower than at the same time last year. Noting we are early in the tax time period and lodgment numbers continue to fluctuate, making it too soon to identify any clear patterns.
- To date most lodgments received were self-lodged by taxpayers (approximately 497,000). We have received approximately 92,000 lodged through registered tax agents.
IT system updates and maintenance
- All systems are currently operating normally, with no outages recorded.
- Some users experienced intermittent issues with myID on 1 July. The issue was resolved by 11:30 am and overall system performance has remained stable.
Digital services
- Digital services are operating as intended. Online services for agents and myTax are working well, with no major issues identified.
- An issue has been identified impacting Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR) transmission messages. The transmission issues can occur when mandatory fields are left blank instead of being entered as zero, resulting in unsuccessful lodgment attempts. Whilst this issue is being resolved the impacted agents will be contacted and DSPs notified.
- Work continues to ensure availability of pre-fill information and you can check the availability of pre-fill data on ato.gov.au/prefillavailability, which is updated regularly.
Member comments
Members asked for an update on the availability of third-party pre-fill data. We advised that a further update will be provided next week and noted that third-party data is currently flowing through successfully.
Members also noted that some ATO communications encourage taxpayers to check information that may not be available through pre-fill services, such as gig economy income, and asked whether this information could be provided directly to tax agents.
We advised that much of this information is expected to become available through TPAR reporting, which is due by the end of August.
External communications
- The first tax time edition of Tax and BAS agents news featured the release of the Registered agent lodgment program and promotion of the tax professionals tax time livestream recording.
- This week's Tax and BAS agents news contained 25 articles including
- Tax professional support channels
- New TPAR pre-fill for individuals in business
- Changes to deductible donations ($2 threshold removed)
- Commissioner’s column covering themes from the recent livestream
- Investor information, including the release of the investors tax time toolkit.
- The 'wait to lodge' message continues to be promoted to encourage taxpayers to lodge only once all relevant information has been pre-filled.
- The ATO Tax Time Spokesperson delivered critical messaging around misinformation, reminding taxpayers to check information with registered agents and ato.gov.au.
- We also reminded taxpayers that the $1,000 standard deduction does not apply for this tax time.
- We recently published practical tips to help small businesses stay on track this tax time, including a reminder that ATO interest charges can no longer be claimed as a deduction.
Member comments
Members noted their interest in seeing how lodgments track going forward, with the hope that the message to not lodge early is starting to get through.
Superannuation
- We continue to closely monitor the implementation of Payday Super. Early data indicates that changes are progressing smoothly at this stage.
- While implementation is tracking well, work is ongoing and will continue over the next 12 months to deliver full implementation of the systems necessary to support Payday Super arrangements.