Key takeaways
- Super is on time if the fund receives it, with the information needed to allocate it, within 7 business days after payday. Clearing house transit sits inside your 7 days, not outside them.
- A public holiday covering the whole of any state or territory is not a business day, and it extends the deadline nationally. A part-of-state holiday does not.
- Four extensions exist: 20 business days for a first contribution, out-of-cycle payments tied to the next regular payday, exceptional circumstances, and a bunching rule.
- You no longer lodge a super guarantee statement. The ATO assesses the charge and issues a notice, and payment is due the day the assessment is made.
- The super guarantee charge for paydays from 1 July 2026 is tax deductible. The quarterly charge for quarter 4 2025-26, due 28 August 2026, is not.
- The administrative uplift starts at 60% and can be driven to 0% by a clean two-year record plus a voluntary disclosure within 30 days.
The rule, in one sentence
The ATO states it plainly: your super guarantee contribution is on time if it is received by your employee's super fund, with all the necessary information to allocate the contribution to the employee's member account, within 7 business days after paying your employee.
Three parts of that sentence do the damage, and each one catches a different employer.
| The words | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Received by the fund | Not sent by you. If your clearing house takes four days to pass the money on, you have three days of slack, not seven. |
| With the allocation information | Money arriving without the data that lets the fund credit the member account does not stop the clock. |
| 7 business days | Not 7 calendar days. Weekends and whole-of-state public holidays are excluded. |
The clock starts on the QE day, which the ATO defines as the day you pay an employee an amount of qualifying earnings. In most cases that is your regular payday. It is set by the date the employee is paid, not by when the run was entered into payroll, not by when other employees were paid, and not by any Single Touch Payroll reporting concession you may hold. If you report through STP, the mechanics are in Single Touch Payroll.
The ATO also states its preference directly: it is best practice to pay super guarantee contributions on payday. The 7 business days are a tolerance, not a target. One change that helps is the New Payments Platform, which employers and service providers can use for contributions from 1 July 2026. The ATO says contributions made through payroll or clearing houses using the NPP could be received by the fund on the same day.
The rate itself has not moved: super guarantee is 12.00% for 2026-27, and the super guarantee calculator works out the contribution on any set of earnings.
The business day definition is the same one the BAS ladder uses
Verbatim from the ATO, a business day is any day other than:
- a Saturday or Sunday
- a day that is a public holiday for the whole of any Australian state or territory.
The ATO spells this out: if there is a state or territory-wide public holiday, that day is not a business day for Payday Super purposes, even if you are not in that state or territory. A holiday applying to only part of a state, and the ATO names Royal Hobart Show Day, is still a business day.
This is the same whole-of-state rule that governs activity statement due dates, which is why BAS due dates shift the way they do. The ATO applies it to its own Payday Super examples. In the worked example for a new employee below, both due dates carry an extra day, and the ATO explains why in a note: Picnic Day in the Northern Territory, Monday 3 August 2026, is not counted as a business day. That is a Northern Territory holiday extending the deadline for an employer anywhere in Australia.
The four extensions, with the ATO's own dates
1. First contribution: 20 business days
Where the contribution is the first eligible super guarantee contribution for a new employee, or the first to a new fund for an existing employee, it must be received within 20 business days after the relevant QE day. This covers the first contribution only. Every contribution after it reverts to 7 business days.
The ATO's two examples:
| Situation | QE day | Contribution due |
|---|---|---|
| New employee Mary, first pay | 9 July 2026 | 7 August 2026 |
| Mary, second pay | 30 July 2026 | 11 August 2026 |
| Francine changes funds, next payday | 7 August 2026 | 4 September 2026 |
| Francine, following payday | 4 September 2026 | 15 September 2026 |
Both of Mary's dates include an additional day because of Picnic Day. Anyone reconstructing these dates from a calendar without the public holiday table will be one day out.
2. Out-of-cycle payments follow the next regular payday
Where you pay qualifying earnings out of cycle with an employee's regular payday, the contribution is due within 7 business days after the next payment of qualifying earnings that is not out of cycle. The rule is set by LI 2026/20, the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration)(Out-of-Cycle Qualifying Earnings) Determination 2026.
The ATO's example: a $1,000 Christmas bonus paid to Luca on 7 December 2026, with regular weekly pay next falling on 10 December 2026, means super for both the bonus and the 10 December payday is due 21 December 2026.
That matters for anyone running bonuses or back pay. Withholding on the bonus itself is a separate calculation under Schedule 5, covered in the bonus tax calculator and Schedule 5 bonus tax tables. The super deadline for that bonus now hangs off the next ordinary payday rather than the bonus date.
Employees with intermittent or irregular paydays are not out of cycle. The ATO gives an eligible contractor paid on invoice as its example, which is worth knowing if you engage workers through the arrangements in the contractor pay calculator.
3. Exceptional circumstances
The ATO may determine that a class of employers is affected by exceptional circumstances, limited to natural disasters and widespread information technology and communication outages. Contributions are then due at the later of 20 business days after the QE day, or 20 business days after the determination is made. Employers self-assess whether they are covered and keep records showing it. A determination cannot be issued for an individual employer.
4. The bunching rule
Where a later due date applies to one QE day and the ordinary due date for the next QE day falls before it, the second QE day takes the later date. The ATO's example: Ellie's first pay on 9 July 2026 has an extended due date of 7 August 2026; her second pay on 23 July 2026 would ordinarily be due 4 August 2026, and is pulled out to 7 August 2026 instead.
What it costs when you are late
The super guarantee charge has been rebuilt, and the first change is administrative. For paydays from 1 July 2026 you no longer lodge a super guarantee statement when you get it wrong. The ATO calculates the charge and sends a notice of assessment.
The charge is assessed per QE day and has four components:
| Component | What it is |
|---|---|
| Individual final super guarantee shortfalls | The unpaid super. The individual SG amount is 12% of qualifying earnings for that QE day. |
| Individual notional earnings | Interest on the shortfall, at the general interest charge rate, compounded daily from the day after the last day for an on-time contribution. |
| Administrative uplift | The cost of enforcement. Starts at 60% and can be reduced to nil. See the table below. |
| Choice loading | 25% of the value of contributions for a QE day where choice of fund rules were not followed, capped at $1,200 per notice period. |
Notional earnings stop accruing at the earlier of the day a late contribution reduces the final shortfall to nil, or the day before the ATO makes an assessment. Paying the fund late still helps, because a late contribution reduces the shortfall the rest of the charge is built on.
On choice loading, the ATO carves out the honest failure: no loading applies where you tried to pay the stapled fund using information the ATO gave you, the fund refused the contribution, and you then paid another fund for the employee's benefit. Its worked example of the ordinary case is small and concrete: $120 paid to a default fund instead of the employee's nominated fund, not fixed within 7 business days, produces choice loading of $30.
Not 28 days later. If it is unpaid after 28 days the ATO issues a written Notice to Pay, and if that is unpaid after a further 28 days a late payment penalty applies.
The administrative uplift table is a decision tool, not trivia
The uplift starts at 60% of your total shortfalls plus notional earnings for a QE day. Two reductions apply, and they stack. You get 20 percentage points off if there has been no ATO-initiated super guarantee charge assessment in the two years up to the QE day. Charges from before 1 July 2026 are ignored for that test, as are assessments arising from voluntary disclosure. On top of that, a voluntary disclosure statement lodged before assessment takes off up to a further 40 points, scaled by how fast you move.
| Voluntary disclosure lodged, counting from the QE day | Not assessed in the 2 years ending on the QE day | Assessed in the 2 years ending on the QE day |
|---|---|---|
| Within 30 days | 0% | 20% |
| 31 to 60 days | 5% | 25% |
| 61 to 120 days | 10% | 30% |
| More than 120 days | 25% | 45% |
| Not lodged before assessment | 40% | 60% |
Read the top-left cell again. An employer with a clean two-year record who discloses within 30 days pays no administrative uplift at all. The same employer who says nothing and waits for the assessment pays 40%. On a shortfall plus notional earnings of $400, that is the difference between $400 and $560.
The ATO's own worked example lands in between: on $400 of shortfalls and notional earnings, the uplift starts at 60%, or $240, and is reduced to 40%, or $160, because it is the employer's first ATO-initiated assessment since 1 July 2026. Total charge $560.
The deduction that flipped on 1 July 2026
This is the change most likely to be missed, because it reverses decades of practice. The ATO states that you can claim a tax deduction for super guarantee charge relating to QE days from 1 July 2026 onwards, and that it applies to all components you pay: the individual final shortfall, notional earnings, the administrative uplift and choice loading.
Three things stay non-deductible:
- general interest charge on a late super guarantee charge payment
- the late payment penalty
- super guarantee charge relating to quarterly periods before 1 July 2026.
An employer who was late in quarter 4 2025-26 and also missed a July 2026 payday is holding both. The quarterly super guarantee charge statement for 1 April to 30 June 2026 is due 28 August 2026, and the ATO says flatly that you cannot claim an income tax deduction for the quarterly super guarantee charge. The Payday Super charge sitting beside it is deductible in full. Same employer, same year, same underlying failure to pay super on time, opposite answers, and the only thing separating them is which side of 1 July 2026 the payday fell on.
That 28 August statement is the last of its kind. The full set of August dates, including the two that fall before it, is in every ATO date in August 2026.
The first year is deliberately soft, and that is not a licence
The ATO has published a supportive first-year approach, governed by PCG 2026/1, Payday Super first year ATO compliance approach. In its own words it will not review employers who are paying their employees super for each payday and fixing errors quickly, and it will focus compliance action on employers who are not trying to make the change to more frequent payments, not fixing errors, or not paying super at all.
The distinction is effort and speed, not perfection. The ATO's practical instruction for anyone who has already slipped in July is to pay the correct amount to the fund as soon as you realise the error, as long as you have not received a notice of assessment about it. Doing that puts you in the first group, and it also starts the 30-day voluntary disclosure clock in the uplift table above.
Worth noting who this covers. The 7 business day rule applies to everyone entitled to super guarantee, which includes independent contractors paid mainly for their labour, sportspeople and performers, and company directors and executives. If you pay contractors under an ABN, the classification question is set out in ABN tax, and a contractor paid mainly for labour is inside these rules regardless of the invoice.
For the payroll side of the same run, the payslip generator produces a compliant payslip and the PAYG withholding calculator works out the tax to withhold from the same gross figure the super is calculated on.
Frequently asked questions
When is super due under Payday Super?
Is it 7 business days or 7 calendar days?
Does a public holiday in another state really extend my deadline?
What is a QE day?
Do I still lodge a super guarantee statement if I pay late?
Is the super guarantee charge tax deductible now?
I missed a July payday. What should I do?
When is super due for a new employee?
When is super due on a bonus paid off cycle?
Sources
All ATO pages fetched 2 August 2026. Every rate, deadline and worked date on this page traces to one of them.
- Payment deadlines for payday super (QC105846, last updated 21 June 2026). The 7 business day rule, the business day definition, the four extensions and the New Payments Platform.
- What happens if you do not pay super correctly (QC105848, last updated 21 June 2026). The four super guarantee charge components, the administrative uplift table, choice loading and deductibility.
- Paying super on payday (QC105839). The Payday Super hub.
- Due dates by month: August (QC32041, last updated 23 July 2026). The quarter 4 super guarantee charge statement due 28 August 2026, and its non-deductibility.
LI 2026/20 and PCG 2026/1 are cited by the titles and identifiers the ATO gives them. This page does not quote either instrument.
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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.