Payroll Tax Reporting - National System

Currently, employers must collect and report monthly wages information and annual reconciliations for each State using various systems/forms. Members of a group then also require a Designated Group Employer (“DGE”) to lodge a separate annual reconciliation for each State summing the wages information for every group company both in the relevant State as well as Australia wide (in order to apply State payroll tax thresholds on a group basis). The electronic platforms developed and used by each State are different, but ultimately all require a national group wages figure in addition to the relevant State wages. A single system for reporting would streamline employer obligations and still allow each State to tap into the information they require to administer their own payroll tax regime. Each employer in a group would simply enter their own wages information for each State once, and the annual group information can be extracted automatically from the data base (eliminating the DGE annual reporting process currently required to apply payroll tax thresholds).

A single system to collect the payroll tax information for each State would not only produce significant compliance cost savings for business, but presumably also for the State governments in sharing the administration cost for a single system.