TPAR Due Date for Builders — 28 August

TPAR in five lines

• Due: 28 August each year, covering contractor payments in the year to 30 June.
• Who: businesses primarily in building and construction that pay contractors for building and construction services and have an ABN.
• What: for each contractor — ABN, name, address, gross amount paid including GST, and GST paid.
• Not: payments for materials only, employees on PAYG withholding, and invoices unpaid at 30 June.
• Late: one penalty unit for every 28 days overdue, up to five — and a penalty unit is $364 for breaches from 1 July 2026.

What a TPAR actually is

The Taxable payments annual report is the ATO's way of seeing contractor income from the paying side. You tell the ATO what you paid each subbie; the ATO matches that against what the subbie declared. The ATO introduced it for building and construction first, then extended it to cleaning, courier and road freight, IT, and security, investigation and surveillance services. It's a reporting obligation, not a tax — nothing is payable with it — but it's enforced like any other lodgment.

Who has to lodge: the 50% test

The ATO says you must lodge a TPAR if you are a business that is primarily in the building and construction industry, you make payments to contractors for building and construction services, and you have an ABN. You are "primarily" in building and construction if any one of these applies:

• in the current financial year, 50% or more of your business income is from building and construction services;
• in the current financial year, 50% or more of your business activity relates to building and construction services; or
• in the financial year immediately before the current one, 50% or more of your business income was from building and construction services.

"Building and construction services" is deliberately wide. The ATO's list covers construction, alteration, assembly, repair, installation, finishing, site preparation, demolition, design, and more, and includes trades such as bricklaying, carpentry, concreting, electrical work, plumbing, painting, plastering, tiling, landscaping, roofing and earthworks. If you're a builder, a trade contractor who uses other subbies, or a developer whose main activity is construction, assume you're in.

What to report for each contractor

If an invoice covers both labour and materials — a plumber who supplies and installs — you report the whole payment. Only invoices that are for materials alone are excluded. You report on a cash basis: only payments you actually made on or before 30 June, regardless of when the work was done or invoiced.

What you don't report

• Payments for materials only — a timber delivery, a tile order.
• Employees — wages are reported through Single Touch Payroll, not TPAR.
• Labour-hire workers supplied by a labour-hire firm, where the firm is responsible for PAYG withholding.
• Payments subject to PAYG withholding under a voluntary agreement.
• Invoices unpaid at 30 June — they go in next year's report when you pay them.
• Private or domestic payments — a renovation on your own home that isn't a business activity.

How to lodge

There are three practical ways:

1. Through your accounting software. Xero, MYOB and most cloud systems can produce and lodge a TPAR directly, as long as contractor bills were coded as reportable during the year. This is where most of the time is saved or lost: if subbies weren't flagged as you went, someone has to go back through twelve months of bills.
2. Through ATO Online services for business, entering contractor details manually or uploading a file.
3. Through a registered tax or BAS agent, who lodges it on your behalf from your file.

Lodging on paper is being phased out; plan to lodge online.

Nothing to report? Lodge a non-lodgment advice

If the ATO is expecting a TPAR from you — because you lodged one last year, or your BAS shows contractor payments — but you have nothing to report this year, submit a TPAR non-lodgment advice. It takes a few minutes and stops the reminder letters that eventually turn into penalties. Don't just ignore it.

The penalty for lodging late

The failure to lodge on time (FTL) penalty is calculated at one penalty unit for every 28 days (or part of 28 days) the report is overdue, up to a maximum of five penalty units. That base amount applies to small entities; medium and large withholders have it multiplied.

A penalty unit was $330 from 7 November 2024. It was indexed to $364 for breaches committed on or after 1 July 2026. So for a small business, a 2025–26 TPAR left unlodged for five months or more would attract a base penalty of up to $1,820.

The ATO can remit all or part of a penalty based on your circumstances. Lodging voluntarily, before the ATO chases you, and having a genuine reason — illness, a natural disaster, a bookkeeper who left — helps. "Didn't know" rarely does on its own.

Why the ATO cares so much

TPAR data is matched against the income contractors declare. Every year the ATO announces how many contractors it has contacted because their reported payments didn't match their tax returns or they weren't registered for GST when they should have been. Your TPAR is the evidence in that process. If you don't lodge, the ATO can't see your subbies' income — and it also can't see that your own contractor claims are legitimate.

Getting ready for 28 August 2027

• Collect ABN, name and address from every new subbie before their first invoice is paid. Check the ABN on ABN Lookup — a cancelled ABN means you should be withholding.
• Flag contractors as TPAR-reportable in Xero or MYOB the day you set them up.
• Split labour and materials suppliers. Your timber yard isn't reportable; your frame carpenter is.
• Reconcile contractor payments to the bank at year-end so the report matches what actually left your account.
• Run the TPAR report in July, not August. If there's a problem — a subbie with no ABN, a payment coded to the wrong account — you want six weeks to fix it, not six hours.

If you'd rather not think about any of this, that's what we do. Our fixed-fee plans for builders include the subbie register, the ABN checks and the TPAR lodgment. More on BAS & TPAR for builders →