Compliance deadlines are not difficult. They are just numerous, and they arrive on a schedule that has nothing to do with when your business is busy.
For a Melbourne small business in 2026-27, the calendar has more on it than it did last year. Payday super arrived on 1 July and added a deadline that recurs every pay cycle rather than every quarter. Victorian payroll tax settings carried through unchanged but continue to catch businesses that cross the threshold mid-year. The usual BAS and superannuation rhythm sits underneath all of it.
Here is the year laid out, with the parts that have changed marked clearly.
The deadline that is new: every payday
Since 1 July 2026, employers must pay superannuation guarantee contributions at the same time as salary and wages, and the contribution must reach the employee’s nominated fund within seven business days of payday.
This replaces the quarterly system, under which contributions were due within 28 days of the end of each quarter. The superannuation guarantee rate itself remains at 12 per cent.
A longer window of 20 business days applies to the first contribution for a new employee or into a new fund, which accommodates onboarding and stapled fund searches. It does not apply to the second pay run.
Business days exclude weekends and public holidays, and this is where Melbourne businesses get caught. Victoria has a well-populated public holiday calendar, and a fortnightly cycle paying on a Thursday will repeatedly land in a week containing one. Melbourne Cup Day, the AFL Grand Final Friday, Labour Day, Easter and the Queen’s Birthday all compress the window at some point in the year.
The Small Business Superannuation Clearing House has closed, which removed the free ATO-run tool a great many small employers used to split payments across multiple funds. If you have not measured how long your replacement actually takes to get money into a fund, that is the most useful hour you can spend on compliance this quarter.
Late contributions trigger the superannuation guarantee charge, assessed with daily compounding interest plus an administrative uplift, with penalties of 25 or 50 per cent of the unpaid charge available on top.
The ATO finalised Practical Compliance Guideline 2026/1 on 28 January 2026, setting a risk-rated framework for the implementation year running 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027. Employers making a genuine attempt to pay each payday and correcting minor errors promptly are unlikely to be the focus of compliance activity. That is a window to get the process right, not a grace period.
The quarterly rhythm: BAS
For businesses lodging quarterly, the standard due dates are:
Quarter 1 (July to September): due 28 October
Quarter 2 (October to December): due 28 February
Quarter 3 (January to March): due 28 April
Quarter 4 (April to June): due 28 July
Quarter 2 gets the extended date because of the Christmas period.
If you lodge through a registered BAS or tax agent, concessional dates apply and are generally several weeks later than the standard dates. This is one of the more tangible benefits of using an agent, and a surprising number of businesses lodging their own BAS are unaware the concession exists.
Businesses lodging monthly are due on the 21st of the following month.
The practical advice on BAS is unchanged and unglamorous: reconcile as you go rather than at lodgement. A BAS prepared from a reconciled ledger takes an hour. A BAS prepared from three months of unreconciled transactions takes a day and produces errors that surface later as amendments.
Victorian payroll tax
Victoria’s payroll tax settings for 2026-27 were left untouched by the May 2026 state budget, so the position carried through from the previous year.
The threshold is $1 million annually, or $83,333 monthly. The standard rate is 4.85 per cent. Regional employers, defined as businesses paying at least 85 per cent of taxable wages to regional employees, pay a reduced rate of 1.2125 per cent.
The threshold phases out for larger employers. It reduces by $1 for every $2 of Australian wages above $3 million, and employers with Australian wages above $5 million receive no threshold at all.
Two things about Victorian payroll tax catch Melbourne businesses regularly.
The first is that Victoria’s threshold is the lowest in the country, equal with Western Australia. A wage bill that attracts no payroll tax in Queensland, where the threshold is $1.3 million, is taxable in Victoria. Benchmarks quoted by interstate peers need translating before you rely on them.
The second is what counts as taxable wages. It is broader than salary. Superannuation, allowances, fringe benefits and many contractor payments all count. Businesses that use contractors heavily frequently discover they crossed the threshold some time ago, and the contractor provisions are one of the most common areas of adjustment on review.
Grouping rules add another layer. Related entities are grouped and assessed on combined wages, which means a family business running three separate companies can be over the threshold without any single entity looking close to it.
If your wage bill is anywhere near $1 million, including super and contractors, get the position confirmed rather than estimated. Penalties for late registration can be substantial, and they apply even where the eventual tax payable is modest.
Income tax and the year-end sequence
Tax return due dates depend on your structure and whether you lodge through an agent. Self-lodgers are generally due 31 October. Agent-lodged returns run on a staggered schedule through to May the following year, depending on the entity and its lodgement history.
Two changes from the 2026-27 Federal Budget are worth noting in the year-end conversation.
The instant asset write-off threshold is now permanently set at $20,000 for businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million, for assets first used or installed ready for use from 1 July 2026. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 2) Bill 2026 passed both Houses on 19 August 2026 and has received Royal Assent. There is no sunset clause, which means the annual June rush to beat a deadline is no longer necessary.
The same legislation reintroduced a two-year loss carry back for companies, allowing eligible corporate entities to carry a loss from an income year beginning on or after 1 July 2026 back against tax paid in up to the two previous years, generating a refundable offset capped at the franking account balance.
The recurring items that are easy to forget
WorkCover. Victorian employers must register with WorkSafe and declare rateable remuneration annually. Premiums are based on that declaration and on your industry classification. Under-declaring produces a reconciliation adjustment with interest.
Long service leave. Victoria’s portable long service leave schemes cover several industries, including community services, contract cleaning and security. If you operate in a covered industry, quarterly returns and levies apply on top of your standard obligations.
TPAR. Businesses in building and construction, cleaning, courier, road freight, IT and security services must lodge a Taxable Payments Annual Report by 28 August each year, reporting payments to contractors. This one is missed frequently by businesses that do not think of themselves as being in a covered industry.
Superannuation for contractors. Some contractors are employees for superannuation purposes even where they are contractors for every other purpose. This has always been true and has become more consequential now that super is paid per payday.
The year at a glance
Laid out month by month, with the fortnightly super obligation running underneath all of it.
July. New financial year begins. Payroll software updates apply. Fourth quarter BAS from the previous year is due on 28 July. Confirm any award rate changes have flowed through to your pay runs.
August. Taxable Payments Annual Report due 28 August, if you are in a covered industry. This is the one most commonly missed.
September. Quiet month for lodgement. A good point to run your first quarterly review of the year: payroll tax position, fixed asset register, debtor ageing.
October. First quarter BAS due 28 October. Income tax return due 31 October for self-lodgers.
November. Melbourne Cup Day compresses the super window for any pay run landing that week. Check it in advance.
December. Wind-down period. Confirm who is authorising pay runs and super payments over the shutdown, because the seven business day window does not pause for the Christmas break and the public holiday cluster makes it tight.
January. Recovery month. Second quarter BAS is not due until 28 February, which is the extended Christmas concession.
February. Second quarter BAS due 28 February.
March. Labour Day in Victoria compresses the super window. Half-year review point: is your wage bill tracking toward the payroll tax threshold?
April. Third quarter BAS due 28 April. Easter public holidays affect super timing significantly, with two public holidays in the same week.
May. Federal Budget, usually the second Tuesday. Watch for changes affecting the following financial year.
June. Year-end planning. Confirm asset purchases, review the loss position if you operate through a company, and make sure everything you intend to claim is first used or installed ready for use before 30 June.
Two ongoing items sit outside that rhythm. WorkCover rateable remuneration declarations are due annually on a schedule set by WorkSafe. Portable long service leave returns, where your industry is covered, are quarterly.
Building the calendar
The practical version of all this is a single document with dates on it, reviewed quarterly.
Start with the fixed items: BAS dates, the TPAR date if it applies, WorkCover declaration, income tax lodgement.
Then overlay the pay calendar for the full year, with every payday marked and the seven business day super window calculated for each one. Mark every pay run where a public holiday compresses that window, and set those to initiate early.
Then add review points rather than just deadlines. A quarterly check on whether your wage bill is approaching the payroll tax threshold. A half-yearly reconciliation of your fixed asset register. An annual review of whether your BAS agent concessions are actually being used.
The businesses that find compliance stressful are not usually the ones with more obligations. They are the ones discovering obligations at the deadline rather than tracking them from the start of the year.
When the calendar outgrows the owner
There is a point at which this stops being a scheduling problem and becomes a resourcing one.
A business with a handful of staff, quarterly BAS and no payroll tax exposure can reasonably run this from a wall calendar and a weekend. A business with twenty staff across multiple awards, a fortnightly super deadline, payroll tax registration, WorkCover, TPAR and contractor classification questions cannot, at least not while the owner is also running the business.
Digit is a Xero Platinum Partner and registered BAS agent that has provided bookkeeping services for Melbourne businesses since expanding into Victoria from its Perth base, with payroll specialists who handle Victorian award interpretation and a team across each client file rather than a single operator. Whether outsourcing makes sense depends on your headcount and complexity, but the trigger point is usually the same: the moment the compliance calendar has more items on it than one person can hold in their head while doing something else.
The short version
Payday super is the change that matters most this year, and it is the one most likely to produce a penalty, because it recurs every fortnight rather than every quarter and the seven business day window is genuinely tight around Victorian public holidays.
BAS dates are unchanged. Victorian payroll tax is unchanged but remains the lowest threshold in the country, and taxable wages are broader than most people assume.
The instant asset write-off is permanent now, which means you can stop buying equipment in June for tax reasons and start buying it when the business actually needs it.
Put the year on one page, check it quarterly, and the whole thing becomes administration rather than crisis.
This article is general information only and does not take into account your specific circumstances. Confirm your obligations with a registered BAS or tax agent, and confirm Victorian payroll tax settings with the State Revenue Office.
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