Are you STP Phase 2 ready?
There’s no time to rest on your laurels, Small Businesses!
Phase 2 of Single Touch Payroll is now being rolled out – the good news is that Xero users have an extension to get up and running.
By Michael Mekhitarian
Extension for Xero users
The ATO has reiterated that Phase 2 of STP reporting has commenced. Of course, if you have already made the transition this won’t affect you.
If you haven’t, and you use Xero, deferrals are available – you need to apply. We can help, we have already sent through deferral applications for a few of our clients.
2022 has been an unexpected kind of year, many have been plagued by floods, staff shortages … the list goes on, and the ATO has promised that its approach to STP Phase 2 will be “flexible, reasonable and pragmatic based, depending on business readiness.
But you do need to let the ATO know where you’re at, and when you will be ‘Phase 2 ready’.
What is STP Phase 2?
Briefly, the key changes in Phase 2 of STP include:
- Disaggregation of gross
- Employment and taxation conditions
- Income types
- Country codes
- Child support garnishees and child support deductions
- Reporting previous Business Management Software IDs and Payroll IDs
- Disaggregation of gross
What isn’t changing, is:
- The way you lodge
- The due date
- The types of payments that are needed
- Tax and super obligations
- End-of-year finalisation requirements.
For more detail, talk to us, or read more on the ATO website.
The ATO has also published a series of fact sheets, which are also quite helpful.
There are a lot of good things about STP Phase 2
While the expansion of STP will reduce the overall reporting burden for employers who need to report information about their employees to multiple government agencies, it will take some time and focus to implement.
The team here at ATB Partners can help you with all of this. In the coming days, we’re sending out a proposal to businesses to outline the services we’re offering and the costs involved.
With the end of a pretty tough year almost here, and many businesses planning shut down and extended holiday absences, it might make sense to outsource this, to be sure that your internal teams are not overloaded and stressed.
There will be no penalties for genuine reporting errors for the first year of Phase 2 reporting until 31 December 2022.
Implementation, while it shouldn’t be overly cumbersome, particularly for those businesses using Xero – will still be a disruption / interruption. The systems need to be in place, your policies will need to be updated and staff accessing the system will need some time to familiarise themselves with the key changes, so there are considerations around how to manage this.
We’re here to help. Feel free to reach out, and book time with our team.
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