What is the Single Touch Payroll (STP) Phase 2 employment basis?

Andrew

Updated 30 July 2024 22:49

Question

What is the employment basis?

Answer

For STP Phase 2, one of the employment conditions is to report the employment basis of each individual. The employment basis is the equivalent of the Employment Type field. This data becomes critical in providing context to the changes in the financial amounts for each STP event for government agencies using this data.

For example, the change of employment circumstances may help the ATO to better assess the correctness of PAYG amounts being withheld for a casual employee that has multiple employers and to avoid a tax debt at the end of the financial year. To read further information on how to update an employee’s employment type, you can refer to the following article.

Further information

Definitions: Employment types

Full time.	A person who is engaged for the full ordinary hours of work as agreed between the employer and employee and/or set by an award, registered agreement or other engagement arrangement.
Part time.	A person who is engaged for less than the full ordinary hours of work, as agreed between the employer and employee and/or set by an award, registered agreement or other engagement arrangement.
Casual.	A person who does not have a firm commitment in advance from an employer about how long they will be employed or engaged, or for the days or hours they will work.
Superannuation Income Stream.	A non-employee who is not part of STP payments, but you may include them in STP for voluntary reporting of superannuation liabilities only
Labour Hire.	A contractor who has been engaged by an employer to work for their client. The hours of work and duration of engagement are not factors for consideration.
Voluntary Agreement.	A contractor with their own ABN and is an individual person, rather than a business. We do not support this employment basis in Employment Hero Payroll.
Death Beneficiary.	The recipient of an ETP death beneficiary payment who is a dependant, non-dependant, or trustee of the estate of the deceased employee. You must only use this option if the death beneficiary is not already an existing employee. If the beneficiary is an existing employee, then you should assign one of the above valid options to the beneficiary instead. We do currently support this option in the Employment Hero HR or payroll platforms.

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