Taxable payments annual report for Building and construction

Every business that operates in the Building and Construction industry and makes payments to contractors are required to complete and lodge a ‘Taxable Payments Annual Report’.

This report includes the total payments you make to each contractor for building and construction services. You must lodge this report to the ATO every year by 28 August.

What to lodge?

This report includes information such as:

Total Payments made
Contractor name
Address & Phone number
ABN – If known
GST paid

What not to lodge?

You do not need to report:

Payments for materials only
Unpaid invoices as at 30 June
Payments to employees

Why do I need to do this report?

Using this information, the ATO will ‘data match’ the amounts you report as paid against what contractors report (in their tax returns) as received.

During this process, the ATO will also find instances of ‘sham contracting’ – where an employer attempts to disguise an employment relationship as an independent contracting arrangement, usually done to avoid the responsibility of employee entitlements like superannuation, insurance and long service leave obligations – and those not meeting the Personal Service Income rules.

How to lodge?

You can lodge either

Online via Business Portal
By mailing the paper form directly to the ATO

To make it easier to complete the annual report, you should keep very good records of your contractors in, for example, Xero or MYOB. These videos show you how to do this in Xero and how to do this in MYOB.

Examples of building and construction services

The Building & Construction industry casts a wide net, below is "some" of work activities that satisfy the definition. If you would like the

architectural work (including drafting and design)
bricklaying
cabinet making (including joinery and off-site fabrication for installation at a building site)
cable laying
concreting (including formwork, pouring and finishing)
decorating
demolition
earthworks
electrical work (including electrical inspection)
engineering
fencing
flooring (for example, tiling, laying carpet, laying linoleum, timber flooring, floating floors, resilient flooring, slate tiles, and similar flooring)
gas plumbing
glass and glazing work
hanging or installing doors
installation of windows
land clearing
landscaping construction (including paving and design)
levelling sites
painting (internal and external surfaces, including roofs)
plastering (or other wall and ceiling construction)
plumbing work (including plumbing inspection)
project management
rendering (or other internal or external surface finishes)
retaining wall construction
roofing and guttering
sewage or stormwater drainage system construction
surveying
tiling (walls and similar structures)
timber work
wallpapering
waterproofing interior and exterior surfaces
weatherboarding