Your Australian income statement is the digital record the Australian Taxation Office holds of your employment income, tax withheld, and superannuation for the financial year. It replaced the old paper payment summary (once called a group certificate) and is built automatically from data your employer sends the ATO every pay run through Single Touch Payroll. You view it through your myGov account linked to the ATO, and once your employer marks it finalised after 30 June, it becomes the document you use to lodge your tax return.
What Your Income Statement Shows
The statement pulls several categories of pay data into one view. Checking each one against your own pay slips before you lodge is the single best habit for catching problems early.
Gross Pay and Allowances
The top figure is your gross salary or wages before tax. Under STP Phase 2, that gross amount is broken out into separate components rather than shown as a single number, so you can see paid leave, overtime, bonuses, commissions, directors’ fees, allowances, and salary sacrifice as their own lines.1Australian Taxation Office. Disaggregation of Gross Allowances such as travel or overtime meal allowances appear as individual line items.2Australian Taxation Office. Employment Income
Lump Sum Payments
One-off payments sit in their own section. This is where you’ll see genuine redundancy payments, employment termination payments, unused annual or long service leave paid out when you left a job, and back pay from a prior income year.2Australian Taxation Office. Employment Income Each type carries a label from Lump Sum A through E, plus Lump Sum W, because each has different tax treatment. Lump Sum D, for example, is the tax-free component of a genuine redundancy.3Australian Taxation Office. myTax 2025 Salary, Wages, Allowances, Tips, Bonuses Etc
PAYG Tax Withheld
The Pay As You Go figure is the total tax your employer has already sent to the ATO on your behalf across the year.4Australian Taxation Office. Paying and Reporting PAYG Withholding Amounts to Us When you lodge, that amount is credited against your assessed tax. Withhold more than you owe and the difference comes back as a refund; withhold less and you’ll have a balance to pay.
Superannuation
Your statement records the super guarantee contributions your employer paid into your fund. For the 2025–26 financial year the minimum rate is 12 percent of ordinary time earnings, and this is the final scheduled increase, so the rate stays at 12 percent going forward.5Australian Taxation Office. Super Guarantee6Australian Taxation Office. The Final SG Rate Increase Is Coming on 1 July Any reportable employer super contributions above that minimum are shown too, because the ATO uses that figure when assessing eligibility for certain government benefits and offsets.
Reportable Fringe Benefits
If your employer gave you fringe benefits with a total taxable value above $2,000 during the FBT year (which ends 31 March), the grossed-up value shows on your income statement for the matching income year.7Australian Taxation Office. Fringe Benefits Tax – Rates and Thresholds You don’t pay income tax on this amount, but the ATO factors it into income-tested calculations like the family tax benefit and the Medicare levy surcharge. For the FBT year ending 31 March 2026 the minimum grossed-up reporting value is $3,773.
How to Access It Through myGov
The standard route is ATO online services through your myGov account. Once your myGov account is linked to the ATO, sign in, open the ATO service, go to Employment, and pick the income year you want.8Australian Taxation Office. Access Your Income Statement If you haven’t linked yet, the ATO walks you through an identity check using details from a previous tax return or other personal information.9Australian Taxation Office. Create a myGov Account and Link It to the ATO
The ATO app shows the same data through the same Employment section if you’d rather use your phone. A registered tax agent can pull your income statement data through their own authorised portal and use it to prepare your return. If you genuinely can’t get to the digital version, you can contact the ATO to request a copy.8Australian Taxation Office. Access Your Income Statement
Waiting for Tax Ready Before You Lodge
During the year, your income statement is a living document that refreshes with each pay run. After 30 June, your employer submits a finalisation declaration confirming the reported figures are complete and correct. For most employers, that declaration is due by 14 July.10Australian Taxation Office. End of Year Finalisation Through STP Once submitted, the status of your income statement changes to Tax ready and the ATO drops a notification into your myGov inbox.8Australian Taxation Office. Access Your Income Statement
Wait for that label before you lodge. If you file using figures that are still provisional and your employer later adjusts them, you’ll have to amend your return. If Tax ready still isn’t showing well past 14 July, contact your employer to ask whether they’ve completed the finalisation. If you can’t resolve it and you need to lodge before the tax return due date, you can lodge with the information available and amend later if needed.
If You Work More Than One Job
Each employer reports separately through STP, so you’ll see one income statement per employer in your ATO online services account. When you lodge, myTax pre-fills data from all of them into a single return. Compare each statement against your own pay records for that job before you accept the pre-fill.
The one setting that most often causes a tax-time surprise is the tax-free threshold. Claim it from one employer only. If you claim it from two, less tax is withheld across the year and you’re likely to face a bill at lodgment. Your other employers should withhold at the higher “no tax-free threshold” rate, which usually produces a more accurate combined withholding across your jobs. Before lodging, check that every income statement shows Tax ready. If one employer finalises promptly and another lags, wait until all of them are complete.
Fixing Mistakes on Your Income Statement
You can’t edit the statement yourself. The figures come directly from your employer’s payroll software, so any correction has to be made at their end. Raise the error with your employer or their payroll team, and they’ll lodge an amended STP report. The ATO expects those corrections as soon as possible after the error is identified.10Australian Taxation Office. End of Year Finalisation Through STP
Catch it before you lodge and the fix is easy: the corrected figures flow through to your income statement and you file using the updated data. Catch it after you’ve lodged and you’ll need to submit an amended return once your employer has corrected the STP report. That’s the practical reason to sit with your pay slips and the statement side by side before you press submit.
When You Won’t See an Income Statement
A small number of employers are exempt from STP reporting. Employers who hold a withholding payer number are automatically exempt until 30 June 2033 without needing to apply.11Australian Taxation Office. Exemptions From STP Reporting Others can apply for a year-by-year exemption on grounds such as low digital capability (for small employers with 19 or fewer employees), exceptional circumstances like natural disasters, or no internet access in the business’s location.
If your employer holds one of these exemptions, you won’t see an income statement in your myGov account. They must still meet their PAYG withholding obligations the old way, which means they’ll give you a payment summary and lodge an annual report with the ATO.11Australian Taxation Office. Exemptions From STP Reporting Use that payment summary the same way you’d use an income statement when you lodge.