WPN holders that have received the ATO STP letter in the last 4-5 days,
You have 2 options,
Find a tax agent or BAS agent which allows you to continue to submit electronically but you have to have a written agreement in place that conforms to their compliance as a tax/BAS agent. I believe this really means they need to see the submission and agree/approve it, but not sure because it is their compliance conditions. You would then need to associate you WPN number to them and that association would be added to the current STP submission and everything continues as it is. The approval step is the hard one here.
You rely on the ATO WPN STP exemption which is valid till 2033. The 2 changes for you are, you turn OFF the STP switch in the pay run so it does not submit the STP details (after 1 July this will fail with error anyway) and you fall back to the old paper (pdf) Payment Summary forms at end of financial year and there is no more Finalise STP step at end of year.
I know!! It is going backwards and we have been trying hard to get the ATO to address this, even up to last week, but to no avail!
We were also trying to find a friendly or known tax/BAS agent where we could still submit electronically, but that puts them at risk and their own ATO compliance, so gave up on that path. But this is still an option for you if you can find an agent that will agree for you to submit as you do now but assume they would need to see the final payrun screen before you push submit. Again, not sure what they need to be compliant.
Our suggestion and easiest path, turn OFF the STP switch and do Payment Summary at end of year. (see image below)
Painful and going backwards after we worked so hard to make it all happen electronically and against govt policy to make everything electronic and move away from paper-based submission!
Here is a link to the ATO website, don’t trust the date they suggest it was updated, because I know they couldn’t answer some of my question in Feb – Mar 2026. https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/hiring-and-paying-your-workers/single-touch-payroll/need-more-time/exemptions-from-stp-reporting/withholding-payer-number-holders-reporting-through-stp
This only impacts the STP for WPN holders, not STP for ABN holders and not Payday super submissions for either WPN or ABN holders, so everything else continues to work.
Lastly, sorry haven’t highlighted this earlier but was hoping there would be a solution before it happened and at the same time working on our own app compliance to the new STP and Super data formats that need to be working by 1 July.
The other thing you need to do by midnight night 30 June 2026 is finalise your STP, usually you would have till 14 July but with these changes it is safer to do late on 30 June 2026 in case they stop the STP submissions for WPN holders.
Follow the instructions here to finalise https://help.ability8.app/en/articles/94-finalising-stp-at-end-of-year
Turn this switch OFF in furure pay runs
Hope that helps
Ability8 Team
