The Taxable Payments Annual Report (TPAR) is a once-a-year report to the ATO of the payments you made to contractors during the financial year, and it is due on 28 August. If your business pays subcontractors in one of a handful of named industries, you almost certainly have to lodge one. The report exists so the ATO can match what you say you paid a contractor against what that contractor declared as income — which is exactly why lodging it accurately, and on time, matters.
Who has to lodge
You need to lodge a TPAR if you paid contractors and your business provides any of these services: building and construction; cleaning; courier or road freight; information technology; or security, investigation or surveillance. Government entities also report certain payments and grants. If you only provide one of these services, the answer is simple — you are in.
The trap is mixed businesses. A cafe that also runs a delivery service, or a retailer with an in-house IT arm, can be caught if payments for the relevant service make up a large enough share of turnover. The ATO applies a 10% rule to several of these categories: if income from the relevant service is 10% or more of your GST turnover, you report. Building and construction has its own broader rule. If you are unsure whether you cross the line, that is a question to settle now, not on 27 August.
What it actually reports
For each contractor you paid, the TPAR captures their ABN, name and address, the gross amount you paid them across the year (including GST), and the total GST within that. Generally you report the total you paid, including any materials on the invoice — you do not need to split labour out from parts. Payments to employees never appear on a TPAR; those go through Single Touch Payroll. The TPAR is about the people who invoice you, not the people on your payroll.
What trips businesses up
The most common mistake is the belief that "they invoice me, so I don't report them." A contractor's invoice is precisely what a TPAR reports. Cash payments count too. So do payments to a contractor who never gave you an ABN — you still report what you can, and withholding may have applied. The other classic error is leaving it to late August with a shoebox of supplier records and no ABNs recorded, turning a button-press into a fortnight of archaeology.
How to make 28 August a non-event
The businesses for whom TPAR is painless do one thing: they flag reportable contractors in their accounting file as they set each supplier up, not at year end. Most accounting platforms have a per-supplier TPAR setting and can generate the report directly. Turn it on, code contractors correctly through the year, and reconcile once a quarter. Do that and 28 August is a five-minute confirmation rather than an annual scramble. If contractor risk is a live question for your business, our subcontractor risk checker is a useful first pass, and the Finance Hub covers where TPAR sits in the wider compliance calendar.
FAQ
Do I report the materials, or just the labour?
Generally you report the total amount you paid the contractor, including GST and any materials, unless the materials are separately itemised as a supply in their own right. When in doubt, report the total — under-reporting is the riskier error.
What happens if I lodge late?
Late lodgement can attract failure-to-lodge penalties, and the ATO has publicly said it is firm on the 28 August deadline for contractor reporting. If you are behind, lodge as soon as you can rather than waiting for a reminder letter.
I'm a sole trader with one subcontractor. Do I still lodge?
If you operate in a covered industry and you paid a contractor for those services, yes — there is no small-business exemption based purely on size. The test is the type of service, not your scale.
Sources: Australian Taxation Office, Taxable payments annual report (TPAR). Current as at 24 July 2026. General information, not advice.
Not sure whether your contractor records are TPAR-ready? Our free Business Health Check takes five minutes and looks at your compliance setup end to end.
About the author
Nick Lucock
Chief Executive Officer, Valont
Nick leads Valont's day-to-day operations across Finance, People, Operations and Growth. He writes about how the work actually gets done — the processes, systems, and tools that keep Australian SMEs compliant and growing.
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