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Sharing Economy Reporting Regime: what a marketplace reports to the ATO, and when

Your platform connects Australians with drivers, hosts, freelancers or people who hire out their gear: twice a year, you owe the ATO a report on what each supplier was paid. Who is an EDP operator, what is exempt, the two deadlines, and what the law does not ask.

Kreezalid10 min read

In short: under Australia’s Sharing Economy Reporting Regime (SERR), the operator of an “electronic distribution platform” reports to the Commissioner of Taxation the payments made to suppliers for services, hire and accommodation supplied through the platform and connected with Australia. Sales of goods are outside the regime. There are two reports a year, due by 31 July for January to June and by 31 January for July to December. The texts we read set no minimum per supplier and no duty to send suppliers a statement. A late report draws the standard failure-to-lodge penalty.

This guide is for people who run or plan a marketplace. It is built on the legislation itself, read on the Federal Register of Legislation on 12 November 2026. The ATO’s own guidance pages on ato.gov.au refused our requests that day, so nothing below comes from them, and we say where that leaves a gap. It is information, not tax advice: check your own case with an Australian tax adviser.

Where the rules come from

Four texts:

The regime started on 1 July 2023 for taxi travel and short-term accommodation, and on 1 July 2024 for everything else.

Am I concerned?

Is your website an electronic distribution platform?

The definition is wide. Section 84-70 of the GST Act:

“A service (including a website, internet portal, gateway, store or marketplace) is an electronic distribution platform if: (a) the service allows entities to make supplies available to end-users; and (b) the service is delivered by means of electronic communication”

For the SERR, the third condition of that section is set aside, so the two above are enough. The section also says a service is not a platform “solely because” it is a carriage service, or a service providing access to a payment system or processing payments.

Is what your sellers supply reportable?

Item 15 covers a payment to a supplier for a supply made through the platform, if the supply is connected with Australia. It then removes three kinds of supply. The first is the one that matters to most marketplaces:

“a supply by way of transfer of ownership of goods”

The other two are transfers of ownership of real property and financial supplies.

So a marketplace where sellers sell products is not reporting those sales under the SERR. A marketplace for services, rides, deliveries, short-term accommodation, or the hire of cars, tools or spaces is. A mixed marketplace reports the service and hire side only.

Two more conditions in item 15: no amount has to be withheld from the payment under the pay-as-you-go withholding rules, and the operator and the supplier are not members of the same consolidated group.

What if the operator is not Australian?

Item 15 has no condition about where the operator is established. Its test is on the supply, which must be connected with Australia. The explanatory statement to the 2025 determination gives the example of a platform that must report the app-development services bought by an Australian customer from a developer in Sri Lanka.

A separate exemption removes services delivered outside Australia by a supplier with no Australian address, no Australian bank account and no other sign of Australian residence.

What if my marketplace runs on someone else’s software?

Here the texts give less than in the United Kingdom or Canada. Neither item 15 nor section 84-70 defines the “operator” of a platform, and the ATO page that may do so was unreachable. Two passages point to the company that runs the marketplace and pays the suppliers, not to its technology suppliers:

  • Payment processing alone does not make a platform (section 84-70, above).
  • In the explanatory statement’s example 7, a ride-booking platform whose payments are “processed by the Saferider platform using a third-party payment provider” still “must report the transaction”. Using a provider does not move the duty.

Where a supply passes through several platforms, section 6 of the determination relieves the one that “did not itself provide any consideration for the supply directly to the supplier”, provided another platform pays the supplier and reports, and the first has told the Commissioner in writing.

Our reading: the operator is the business that offers the marketplace to suppliers and customers. It is a reading. If your software vendor also contracts with your suppliers or pays them, ask an adviser who is the operator.

The calendar of a year

The 2023 instrument replaced the default yearly report with “each six-month period that begins on 1 January and 1 July”. Section 396-55 sets the deadline: “the 31st day after the end of that period”.

Reporting period Report due
1 January to 30 June 2026 31 July 2026
1 July to 31 December 2026 31 January 2027
1 January to 30 June 2027 31 July 2027

The report is made “in the approved form”, which is the ATO’s to define. We could not open the ATO’s specification, so we cannot tell you its fields or its file format.

What to collect from sellers

Without the approved form, we can only say what the law and the exemptions presuppose you hold.

Section 396-60 says the information required must relate to identifying or collecting a possible tax liability of a party, and “may relate to identifying the parties to the transaction”. The 2025 determination, for its part, works on data per supplier: the addresses the supplier gave you, the country of the bank account you pay, the value of supplies including GST, the number of transactions, and for accommodation the address of each property.

So at a minimum, hold for each supplier an identity you have checked, their addresses, their payout account, and a per-period total of payments and transactions, per property where relevant. Ask for it in your seller onboarding: your payment provider holds part of it, but the report is yours. Get the ATO’s current list of fields before you build anything.

What is exempt

The exemptions are applied transaction by transaction, period by period. From the 2025 determination:

  • Large suppliers. A listed entity or its wholly-owned subsidiary, a government body, or a “substantial supplier”: at least $1,000,000 of supplies including GST through your platform in the 12 months to the end of the period.
  • Large properties. A property with at least 2,000 transactions through your platform in those 12 months.
  • Digital products from abroad, where the platform itself is treated as the supplier for GST.
  • Services outside Australia, as described above.
  • Mere bookings, where the price was not set at booking, is not paid through the platform, and you cannot see whether the supply happened.
  • Scheduled passenger travel with at least 10 places on offer (not charters, not taxis), scheduled events with at least 200 places, permanent attractions with at least 50 places a day.
  • Hire of non-specific assets by a supplier with at least 50 assets available each day, such as a car rental company’s fleet.

No small-seller threshold

Every size test above exempts the large. Neither item 15 nor the determination contains a minimum amount or a minimum number of transactions below which a supplier is not reported. On the texts, one $40 job is reportable. The United Kingdom and Canada treat services the same way, but spare small sellers of goods. The United States sets a high floor for everyone.

What the seller receives

Nothing that the provisions we read require. Section 396-55 tells the operator to “give the report to the Commissioner”, and names no statement for suppliers. We could not check whether ATO guidance asks for more.

The purpose is stated in the explanatory statement to the 2023 instrument: receiving the data before tax returns are lodged “enables early engagement and education strategies to make it easier for taxpayers to get things right”.

What to tell your sellers

Nothing stops you from being open about it, and sellers will ask. Three plain points fit the texts: the platform reports what it paid them to the ATO twice a year; this is required by law and has no minimum; being reported is not a tax bill, but the ATO will have the figures when they lodge their return.

Penalties

We found no penalty specific to the SERR. The general rule in Schedule 1 applies to any document due to the Commissioner in the approved form by a set day (section 286-75). Section 286-80 sets the base amount:

“1 penalty unit for each period of 28 days or part of a period of 28 days starting on the day when the document is due and ending when you give it (up to a maximum of 5 penalty units)”

It is multiplied by 2 for an entity with assessable income or GST turnover above $1 million and below $20 million, and by 5 from $20 million. We did not confirm the current dollar value of a penalty unit, how the ATO applies this to SERR reports in practice, or the penalties for an incorrect report.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Sharing Economy Reporting Regime?

It is the Australian rule that makes operators of electronic distribution platforms report to the ATO the payments made to suppliers through their platform. It applies to taxi travel and short-term accommodation since 1 July 2023, and to all other reportable supplies since 1 July 2024.

Does a marketplace that sells goods report under the SERR?

Not for the sales themselves. The law excludes “a supply by way of transfer of ownership of goods”. Services, hire and accommodation supplied through the same marketplace are reportable.

When are SERR reports due?

Twice a year, on the 31st day after each six-month period: by 31 July for 1 January to 30 June, and by 31 January for 1 July to 31 December.

Is there a minimum amount before a supplier is reported?

No minimum appears in the Act or in the 2025 determination. The exemptions go the other way: they remove large suppliers, such as those with at least $1,000,000 of supplies a year on the platform.

Does the operator have to send suppliers a statement?

The provisions we read require a report to the Commissioner only. We could not open the ATO’s guidance on 12 November 2026 to check whether it recommends more.

The same question in other countries

The regime bears on two models above all: the service marketplace and the rental marketplace.

What Kreezalid prepares for you

On the Grow and Extend plans, your back office has a page called Seller statements, under Sales. It adds up what each seller was paid over a calendar year, quarter by quarter: number of sales, net amount paid, and the fees and commissions you withheld. Each currency has its own table, and nothing is converted.

  • For you: the list of every seller paid in the year, with a CSV export to check, or to hand to your accountant.
  • For each seller: their own statement in their seller space, ready to print or save as a PDF.
  • A hint, not a ruling: sellers under 30 sales of goods and €2,000 are flagged, from your marketplace’s figures alone.

The statement runs on a calendar year, while the Australian regime reports twice a year: the quarters let you rebuild each half-year, and the figures stay working numbers behind your own ATO report.

What it does not do yet: it does not e-mail the statements, it does not collect tax identification numbers or tax residence from your sellers, and it does not produce the file for the tax authority. Those are the next steps on our roadmap. You remain the operator: Kreezalid computes the figures and files nothing on your behalf.

See what each plan includes on the pricing page.

Sources

All read on 12 November 2026, on the Federal Register of Legislation.