It’s been a minute. Here are the big headlines to go through and see how they connect up.

Payday Super is live. The GIC rate is up again, and the real cost of carrying ATO debt is the highest it's ever been. The fuel response payment plan has closed, though the debts it was built for haven't gone anywhere. And the Tax Ombudsman's review pipeline for the year ahead tells you exactly where the ATO's pressure points are.

What's changed, what's under review, what to act on. That's this edition. Plus, for brokers, you’ve got a dedicated update at the end, including the latest Tax Debt Corner update and the two questions to ask any client with a deal in the next few months.

One housekeeping note before we get into it. We've been doing some canvassing of our subscribers to find out what you want most out of In Brief, and the message was clear: you love what we do, but you'd rather get it as a quarterly deep dive than a monthly skim. Done. This edition of In Brief is the first in our revised quarterly format. Fewer sends, and each one unlocks the most valuable insights of the quarter so you can go deep where it matters for your clients. So without further ado…

IN QUOTES

1. PAYDAY SUPER IS HERE

It’s happened. As of 1 July, super must reach the employee's fund within seven business days of each payday. Not quarterly. Each pay cycle. No transition period.

The operational side of the transition has been well covered. What's had less attention is that July itself is the hardest month of the whole change. Here's why.

Employers who paid super quarterly and timed it to the deadline still owe their June quarter super by 28 July under the old rules. At the same time, Payday Super applies to every pay run from 1 July. For those businesses, that's close to double the usual super outlay in a single month. The June quarter BAS lands on 28 July as well.

The ATO has around 45% of employers already paying super more frequently than quarterly. The July squeeze lands hardest on the rest, the businesses that were using the quarterly buffer as a cash flow tool. For a business paying wages weekly but super quarterly, that was up to three months of float. It's gone.

While the July squeeze is acute, beyond July cash pressure will continue to compound as businesses recalibrate to meet the accelerated super outflows. We expect more instances of negative cash flow across the second half of the year, which is how this becomes a tax debt issue. And why we're flagging it now. Michael Moon wrote about this in his recent column for Access News. Read it here »

What this means for clients with ATO debt

If a client's payment plan was structured before Payday Super was in the picture, the cash flow assumptions behind it may no longer hold. The plan doesn't change. The available cash to service it does. The ATO's risk-based compliance approach gives employers making genuine efforts some room in year one. But real-time reporting means late super is visible within days, and for directors, late super is Director Penalty Notice territory. The temptation in a month like this is to let the BAS slide to fund the super. At the current GIC rate, that's borrowing at the worst rate available from the creditor most likely to escalate.

The practical move: review the tax debt position now and restructure arrangements that no longer fit, rather than managing a default in September. Worth knowing before you do: restructuring a plan mid-stream is itself a negotiation, and how the ATO responds depends heavily on how it's approached and what's put on the table. Done well, it's routine. Done badly, it reads as a warning sign.

2. GIC: RATE, COST, AND REMISSION

The GIC rate for July to September 2026 is 11.43%. Up from 10.96% last quarter, and the highest it's been in years.

The Real Cost of GIC on $100K Debt

The rate barely moved. The real cost is up a third. That's deductibility compounding with the rate rise.

Portfolio triage: what to do now

Every quarter when the rate updates is a useful prompt to run across your client portfolio. Not because the rate moved enough to break a plan. Because the conditions around your clients may have. Which clients have had something change since their plan was set up. Margins squeezed. Revenue softened. Payday Super obligations that weren't in the picture when the plan was agreed.

Which clients are on a payment plan, which are carrying debt without one, and which have had a change in circumstances that means the arrangement no longer fits. For the ones that surface, there's more than one lever: renegotiating the plan, restructuring the arrangement, commercial refinancing, or a remission application. Which lever depends on the client, and working out which one is the work. That part is negotiation territory rather than compliance territory. The triage is your job. Running the negotiation doesn't have to be.

Remission: first wins, rising bar

Since the Tax Ombudsman's remission review forced open a reconsideration pathway for past knockbacks, we've had our first approved remission appeals through the updated process. That's a positive signal. It's not a sign of clear sailing.

The pathway is open, but it's not a form you fill in. It's a case you build: the right legal grounds, the practice statements and precedents that actually land, timing, history and evidence on the table from the outset, and the persistence to keep going when the first answer is no. That tracks with what the ATO is signalling publicly. Second Commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn has acknowledged the ATO's approach to interest remission has been "more concessional than our intended stance" and flagged a more explicit and consistent posture going forward. The pathway is there. The bar isn't getting lower.

We do this work every day, which is the only reason we know where the line currently sits. If a client's knockback from the past 18 months might be worth revisiting, talk to us before applying. The biggest risk of a DIY or generalist application is setting a flawed precedent early on. Once the ATO has anchored their position based on a weak submission, reversing that decision becomes twice as difficult. A weak application now can permanently close a door that a strategically built case would have opened.

3. TAX OMBUDSMAN’S REVIEW WORK

If you want a map of where the tax debt system is straining, the Ombudsman's review pipeline is it. Here's the current slate.

Done: GIC remission review. The Tax Ombudsman's "In the Interest of Fairness" report landed in March. All recommendations accepted, the reconsideration pathway for past knockbacks is live (more below), and the Ombudsman's new implementation updates page now tracks the ATO's progress on every recommendation publicly. Worth bookmarking.

Releasing this month: the bias review. A review of the ATO's controls for managing the risk of bias and prejudice in its decision-making, triggered by a taxpayer complaint where the Ombudsman found some serious historical allegations substantiated, though no unlawful conduct. The systemic findings are expected by the end of July.

Releasing in August: Online Services for Agents. The review is well advanced, with practical recommendations expected on the top agent friction points, including practice mail, and an insights webinar to follow.

Commencing this month: Director Penalty Notices. The review of the ATO's administration of DPNs is scheduled to commence in July. The trigger: DPN issuance surged 136% to more than 84,000 notices in 2024-25, and debt collection remains the highest-volume complaint category the Ombudsman receives. The review will look at whether DPNs are being administered appropriately, followed up properly, and reaching the right people. Significantly, Tax Ombudsman Ruth Owen highlighted that the review will explicitly investigate how DPN liabilities are impacting vulnerable individuals, particularly victim-survivors of financial abuse and coerced directorships.

New from outside the Ombudsman: the ANAO audit. The national auditor has just found the ATO's management of small business collectable debt only "partly effective," after that debt grew nearly 118% over eight years. All eight recommendations were accepted, including that the ATO set a measurable target to reduce small business collectable debt. Read that carefully: the ATO is about to be held to a number. Collection pressure on small business isn't easing. It's about to get KPI'd.

And the complaints data underneath it all. Complaints to the Tax Ombudsman jumped 127% in the financial year just ended, mostly about debt collection, penalties and interest. Nearly four in five penalty complaints centre on the GIC, and the Ombudsman reports penalties or interest were reduced or remitted in 31% of the penalty and interest cases her office handled.

The pattern across all of it is consistent: more enforcement, more scrutiny of that enforcement, and interest and penalties as the central friction point. Which brings us to remission.

4. IN THE NEWS: WHY 21 DAYS IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS…

As Accountants Daily recently reported, a 21-day DPN is not what many would assume it means.

Things to know: Keep in mind that the strict 21-day DPN deadline starts from the date the letter is generated, not when it lands in the mailbox. Postal delays frequently shrink your actual window to act down to 16 or 17 days. Delaying action risks triggering an automatic "lockdown DPN," which permanently locks in personal liability for the director with zero room to move.

Read the Accountants Daily coverage here » 

5. THE FUEL PLAN CLOSED. BUT ITS DESIGN MIGHT BE A PREVIEW

The ATO's fuel response payment plan closed to applications on 30 June, with take-up lower than expected. So why mention it at all?

Because of what the Tax Ombudsman said about it. She's described the clients we all recognise, the ones who "can pay the tax, but they can't pay the debt," because interest has made the payment plan impossible. The fuel plan's design, a structured payment plan with GIC remission built into the conditions up front, is essentially the model she has recommended the ATO adopt for payment plans generally, and the ATO has agreed to explore it. In her words: we know they can build it.

We'd echo that. The fuel plan proved the design is possible. What it hasn't done yet is become how the ATO works day to day, and that's the gap. The outcome it points to, a workable plan with the interest position resolved as part of the deal, is the standard we chase for clients case by case, every day.

The fuel plan may turn out to have been a trial run for how ATO payment plans work in future. But if you want that outcome with certainty, you don't have to wait for the system to build it in. A well-prepared negotiation is how it gets done now.

6. FOR BROKERS: TAX DEBT CORNER

$54.6B in collectable tax debt. Two-thirds with SMEs. That's either your opportunity to work a client through this, or the deal that walks.

Of that ATO balance, GIC and penalties can be 20–70%+ of the total. At 11.43% and non-deductible, that share grows every quarter a debt sits unresolved. Remission is one lever, but with the bar rising it can't be the whole strategy. The right payment plan is often what reopens lender doors before settlement.

The broker who spots tax debt early and brings in the right people keeps the client.

→ Read "Own the tax conversation, own the client" (Tax Debt Corner)

→ Access our CAFBA webinar one-pager

Two questions for any client with a deal in the next few months:

1. Do they have outstanding tax debt?

2. Are they in a plan?

If they have outstanding tax debt and they’re not in a payment plan with the ATO — that's a deal at risk.

If you have any questions relating to tax debt or a client's situation, send them through for a free initial consult. Or call 1300 952 295 to talk to our team.

7. FROM THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR

This quarter: Olga Koskie, CEO and Director Tax Assure:

When you look at everything in this edition of In Brief side by side, it can read like a list of separate developments. Payday Super going live. The GIC rate climbing again. A new review starting, another one reporting, an audit telling the ATO to set itself a debt target. A fuel plan that came and went in three months.

I don’t see separate developments. I see one change happening in different places at once...

Read the full editorial »

TAKEAWAY ACTIONS

Payment plans against Payday Super. If a client has ATO debt and an active plan, it was almost certainly set up before Payday Super was live. Check whether the cash flow assumptions still hold, this month, not after a missed instalment.

Quarterly check-in. Use the 11.43% rate update as the prompt to triage the portfolio and surface the clients whose circumstances have shifted.

Remission reconsideration. Knockbacks from the past 18 months may be worth revisiting, but the bar is rising. Specialist conversation before application.

Fuel plan follow-through. Clients on the fuel plan need instalments and lodgments watertight for the first three months to keep the built-in GIC remission.

Watch the DPN review. It's set to commence this month, but as highlighted in our news feature above, enforcement and tight postage windows won't pause. Directors with unpaid PAYG, GST or super exposure must act before the automatic lockdown window closes.

Have your say in August. The Ombudsman's consultation on next year's work plan opens in August. If your clients keep hitting the same wall with the ATO, that's the channel to put it on the review agenda.

THAT'S A WRAP

We're back in your inbox in October. Tell us what to go deep on next: reply with one word. PAYDAY. DPN. REMISSION. BROKER. We read everything.

Need to discuss a case? Book a consultation with Tax Assure or call 1300 952 295. Initial consults are obligation free and we love working with other specialists to get the right outcome for clients.

About Tax Assure: Australia's leading tax debt negotiation firm. We handle the highest volume of cases and run a specialist team to ensure the best outcomes for clients. Tax Assure works on an assessment and engagement fee followed by a success fee based on GIC and penalties actually remitted, not core debt. Initial consults are obligation free.

^{Disclaimer: The information provided is for general purposes only and should not be considered as specific financial, tax, or legal advice. We recommend consulting with a qualified tax professional or advisor to discuss your specific circumstances before making any decisions or engaging with the Tax Assure team directly.}