PAYG Payment Summary: How to Get Your Income Statement from myGov

The 60-second answer

There is no "PAYG summary" document to download from your employer any more. Your employer reports your pay to the ATO every payday through Single Touch Payroll, and the running total is your income statement. To see it:

1. Sign in to myGov

   Use your existing myGov account at my.gov.au. No account, or the ATO not linked? Create one and link the ATO first; the link is a one-off.

2. Open ATO online services

   From your myGov home screen, select ATO from your linked services.

3. Select Employment

   It sits in the main menu across the top of ATO online services.

4. Select Income statement

   You will see each employer for the income year, your year-to-date income, the tax withheld and the status flag: Tax ready, or Not tax ready.

In the ATO app the path is shorter: log in, select Employment, then pick the income year. Both routes show the same data, and both let you open prior years, so last year's statement is on the same screen as this year's.

Check the tax withheld while you are there

The income statement shows what your employer actually withheld across 2025-26. To sanity-check it, run your salary through the PAYG calculator: a material gap between the two usually traces back to a wrong tax-free threshold setting or an unreported second job, both fixable before they become a tax bill.

Payment summary vs income statement: what changed

Until Single Touch Payroll (STP) arrived, employers reported wages to the ATO once a year and gave each worker a PAYG payment summary, the document older payslips called a group certificate. Under STP the reporting happens every payday, so the annual document became redundant: the ATO already holds the numbers, updated in near real time. The payment summary was renamed an income statement and moved into ATO online services. How the payday reporting itself works is covered in our Single Touch Payroll guide.

Three practical consequences. First, employers on STP do not have to give you anything at year end, so stop waiting for an email. Second, the statement is live: mid-year it shows year-to-date figures that move every payday. Third, your tax agent sees the same data through their own software, so nothing needs forwarding.

What the income statement shows

Per employer, for each income year:

The withholding number is the year's worth of the deductions explained in our PAYG withholding guide. Any reportable fringe benefits shown do not add to your taxable income but do feed income tests like HELP repayments and the Medicare levy surcharge.

What "not tax ready" means and when it flips

Payday data lands unchecked. At year end your employer must finalise it, confirming the totals are complete and correct, and that finalisation flips the status to Tax ready. Until then, ATO online services shows a red Not tax ready box against that employer.

The timing for 2026: employers have until 14 July to finalise. Most statements flip in the first half of July, and myGov sends a notification to your inbox once everything you are owed is tax ready. If a statement is still not tax ready after 31 July, the ATO's advice is to speak to your employer directly; if they cannot finalise at all, they must give you a payment summary instead.

The July timeline, laid out:

Using a tax agent changes nothing about the timing. Agents read the same income statement through their software and Online services for agents, and they are bound by the same rule: wait for Tax ready before preparing and lodging. There is nothing to print, forward or upload to them.

If the figures look wrong

1. Contact your employer first

   Payroll made the report, so payroll corrects it. The ATO cannot rewrite an employer's STP data on your say-so. Most errors are fixed in the next pay event or at finalisation.

2. Got both a statement and a payment summary?

   Same employer, two documents, possibly two different totals. Ask the employer which one to use before lodging; do not add them together.

3. Employer out of business?

   If no one can finalise the data, estimate your income and withholding from payslips and bank records and include the estimate in your return. Keep the evidence: the ATO can ask how you arrived at the figures.

4. Check the withholding settings, not just the totals

   If tax withheld looks too high or low rather than wrong, the cause is usually your claim on the tax-free threshold or an undeclared HELP debt. See should you claim the tax-free threshold, and fix the setting with a withholding declaration rather than waiting for the refund wash-up.

Employers that still issue paper payment summaries

A shrinking group of employers is not yet reporting through STP. They must provide a payment summary, paper or PDF, by 14 July, and you use it exactly as you used the old group certificates: the figures go into your return, manually if they do not pre-fill. You might legitimately hold an income statement from one job and a payment summary from another in the same year; include both. The form you filled out when starting each job, covered in the TFN declaration guide, is what set the withholding behind each document.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• ATO: Access your income statement (myGov and ATO app paths; accessed 28 July 2026)
• ATO: Income statement not tax ready

Related resources

Narelle Hartigan, CPA Verified Expert

Tax Accountant & PAYG Specialist

Narelle Hartigan is a CPA-qualified tax accountant with over a decade of experience in Australian personal taxation and payroll. She founded PAYG Calculator Australia to make tax withholding easy for every Australian worker to understand.

CPABCom (Accounting)

Published: 28 July 2026