You've survived the end of the financial year. Payday super is bedding down. The books are more or less tidy.
So it feels like there's nothing due until the September BAS, right?
Not quite. If your business paid contractors during 2025–26, you may have a Taxable Payments Annual Report due on 28 August — and it's one of the most commonly missed lodgements on the calendar.
Who Actually Needs to Lodge a TPAR
The Taxable Payments Annual Report tells the ATO who you paid, and how much, for contractor services during the year.
It applies to businesses that make payments to contractors for:
• Building and construction services
• Cleaning services
• Courier and road freight services
• Information technology services
• Security, investigation or surveillance services
Here's the part that trips people up. You don't need to be in one of those industries. If you're a business that earned income from those services — even as a side part of what you do — and you paid contractors to help deliver them, you're likely in scope.
A café that pays a courier to run deliveries. A retailer that subcontracts IT support and on-charges it. A builder who uses subbies on every job.
What Counts as a Contractor
Sole traders, partnerships, companies and trusts can all be contractors for TPAR purposes. What matters is the nature of the arrangement, not the size of the business.
For each contractor you'll need their ABN, name, address, and the gross amount you paid them for the year — including GST.
If you've been coding contractor payments consistently in your accounting software all year, this is a five-minute job. If you haven't, it's a reconciliation exercise, and that's why the deadline sneaks up.
Why It's Worth Getting Right
The ATO uses TPAR data to cross-check what contractors declare in their own returns. It's a data-matching exercise, and it works.
Late lodgement can attract failure-to-lodge penalties. More practically, an incorrect TPAR creates problems for the contractors you work with, because the figures you report land in their pre-fill.
Which brings us to the flip side.
If You're the Contractor, Wait Before You Lodge
If you're a sole trader who provides services in any of those industries, the payments made to you are now pre-filled into your tax return.
That data mostly doesn't arrive until after 28 August.
Lodging in early August, before the pre-fill settles, is one of the easiest ways to end up with a mismatch, an amendment, and a delayed refund. It's worth the wait.
When the figures do appear, check them against your own invoicing records rather than accepting them at face value. Pre-fill is a starting point, not a final answer — you're still the one confirming the return is correct.
A Good Time for a Contractor Review
While you're pulling the numbers together, it's worth asking a broader question: are the people you're treating as contractors actually contractors?
Getting that classification wrong has consequences well beyond the TPAR — super guarantee, payroll tax and workers compensation all follow from it. And with payday super now in force, an employee misclassified as a contractor is an exposure that compounds every pay cycle.
If you've got arrangements you've never had a proper look at, now is a sensible time.
Need a Hand Before 28 August?
If you're not sure whether your business needs to lodge a TPAR, or you'd like us to check your contractor payments before the deadline, we can work through it with you.
There's still time to get it sorted properly rather than in a rush.
To book an appointment, contact our office.