TPAR for builders: the taxable payments annual report

By Randall Strickland · Updated 22 October 2026 · 3 min read

If your business is in building and construction and you pay contractors, the ATO wants to know who you paid and how much, once a year. That’s the taxable payments annual report, or TPAR. The report itself is simple. The hard part is having a year of payments in one place, with an ABN against every contractor.

Who has to lodge

You generally need to lodge a TPAR if your business is primarily in building and construction services (broadly, if half or more of your business income or activity comes from them) and you paid contractors for building and construction services during the financial year. The ATO’s website has the exact tests, including the rules for businesses that only do some construction work.

Payments for materials only aren’t reported. Payments that mix labour and materials are reported in full.

What you report for each contractor

• Their ABN (if you know it)
• Their name and address
• The gross amount you paid them in the financial year, including GST
• The total GST included in that amount

The report covers the financial year from 1 July to 30 June and is due by 28 August. You can lodge it through Online services for business, through your accounting software, or through your tax or BAS agent. Late lodgement can attract penalties, so put the date in your calendar.

Make next year easier

• Collect ABNs up front. Ask for an ABN before the first payment. If a contractor doesn’t quote one, you may have to withhold tax from the payment under the no-ABN withholding rules.
• Code subcontractor costs consistently. If every contractor payment goes to the same cost category, the year-end total is one report away.
• Use one name per contractor. “Ridgeline Electrical” and “Ridgeline Elec P/L” become two payees.
• Record the GST. The report asks for it separately.

How JobFigure handles it

Log subcontractor bills against the job under your “Subcontractor” cost category, with the contractor’s name and the GST. At year end, open Send Data Out → Taxable payments annual report (TPAR). It totals every contractor for the financial year (1 July to 30 June), lets you add each one’s ABN and address once (it remembers them), and downloads a spreadsheet with the gross amount including GST and the GST for each contractor, ready to enter or hand to your BAS agent.

Because the costs also sit on each job, the same entries show what every job really made.

This is a plain-English summary, not tax advice. See the ATO’s taxable payments annual report pages for the full rules, and check with your tax or BAS agent.

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