ATO adds PAYGW prefill to activity statements
In the 2023–24 financial year, 3,000 employers will also be randomly selected to receive reminders regarding the lodgment of activity statements.
The Tax Office says it will prefill pay-as-you-go withholding (PAYGW) information in activity statements through ATO online from July 2023.
The prefill would be generated from the amounts reported through STP such as total salary, wages and other payments as well as the amount withheld from those payments.
The Tax Office said it meant employers and their accountants would only need to check that the prefilled amounts matched their records, complete the remaining labels where applicable and lodge and pay the activity statement as before.
From July the Tax Office said it would also pilot a reminder for employers and their registered tax agents to lodge their activity statements in the 2023–24 financial year.
It said 3,000 employers would be randomly selected from those who had an outstanding activity statement and reported PAYGW in STP for the period.
The ATO said tax agents would receive a list to alert them which of their clients had been picked for the pilot.
For those selected, the first overdue activity statement that would trigger a reminder would July 2023 for monthly PAYG withholders and September 2023 for quarterly withholders.
The reminder would include a summary of the amounts the ATO has on record, the PAYGW reported by the employer via STP and any prefilled PAYG instalment or GST instalment amounts.
The Tax Office said if the employer failed to lodge by the date in the reminder it would assume there were no corrections to report and the amounts on record would be added to the integrated client account.
The ATO said from November 2023 tax agents acting on behalf of employers would be able to access an updated on-demand activity statement lodgment report which would show them which clients had been issued a reminder and the proposed next action.
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