If your business paid contractors last financial year, the next date that matters is 28 August. That is the deadline for the taxable payments annual report, or TPAR, and for the first time the date matters just as much to the sole traders on the receiving end of those payments.

Who has to lodge

The TPAR applies to businesses that pay contractors for building and construction, cleaning, courier and road freight, information technology, or security and investigation services. It also catches mixed businesses earning 10 per cent or more of their income from those services. For each contractor you report their ABN, name, address and the total gross amount paid during the 2025 to 2026 year. Most accounting software, including Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks, can build and lodge the report for you, so the job is mostly about making sure contractor details and payment totals are clean before you press the button.

What is new this year

From this tax time, the ATO is pre-filling TPAR amounts directly into contractors' tax returns. Payments you report against a contractor's ABN will appear in that contractor's return as assessable income, alongside government grants and other reported payments. The ATO's pitch is that pre-fill "reduces manual entry, helping you get things right the first time". The flip side: if a contractor wants to change a pre-filled amount, they now need to give a reason code. The days of TPAR income quietly going missing from a return are over.

Sole traders: do not lodge yet

Because most TPAR data will not flow through until after 28 August, the ATO is telling contractors to hold off lodging until then. Lodge in early August and you risk your return missing income that pre-fills a week later, which means an amendment, and possibly a please explain. A short wait saves the double handling.

What to do this week

  • Payers: run your draft TPAR now, chase missing contractor ABNs and fix obviously wrong totals, then lodge by 28 August.
  • Contractors: book your tax appointment for September rather than August, and check the pre-filled amounts against your own invoicing records before lodging.
  • Both: if the numbers do not match, sort it out with the other party first. The ATO matches both sides.

None of this is hard, but the sequencing matters this year. Report clean data, wait for it to land, then lodge.