This tax time, the ATO is cracking down on taxpayers not lodging their taxable payments annual report (TPAR) on time. It has recently issued more than 16,000 penalties for businesses who failed to lodge their TPARs for previous years despite receiving multiple reminders. The average penalty for non-lodgment was approximately $1,110.

As a reminder, the TPAR applies to businesses in the building and construction industry as well as businesses that provide cleaning, courier and road freight, information technology and security, investigation or surveillance services and have paid contractors in relation to those services.

Businesses that may have received a reminder from the ATO to lodge a TPAR but do not actually need to lodge still need to submit a TPAR non-lodgment advice form to avoid an unnecessary follow-up. The form allows entities to notify the ATO about multiple years, as well as to advise that they will not need to lodge in the future.

Around $400 billion in payments made to almost 1.1 million contractors were reported in the TPAR system in the last financial year. The ATO uses the information obtained to check for red flags, including non-reporting of income, non-lodgment of tax returns or activity statements, overclaiming of GST credits or misusing of ABNs.

The ATO will also include information reported in the TPAR in its pre-filling service to help contractors get their income right in their tax returns. The pre-filled data will give taxpayers transparency about the data that has been provided to the ATO about their business transactions.