Accountants for Plumbers

What the new payment rules actually give you

• Maximum payment terms. Any term pushing a progress payment past 20 business days after your claim is served has no effect.
• The other side must either pay in full by the due date or give you a payment schedule within 10 business days.
• Claim frequency. For progress payments the earliest claim day cannot be later than the last day of each month in which you did work. Milestone claims cannot be limited to less than monthly. There is a specific exception for work done between 22 and 31 December.
• Pay when paid is void. Terms making your payment depend on another contract have no effect.
• Retention. Before anyone claims against a performance security they have to give you written notice and wait at least five business days.
• Unfair notice based time bars can be declared unfair where complying would not be reasonably possible.

If your contracts still carry 45 or 60 day terms, or a pay when paid clause, those terms are not enforceable against you any more. Worth knowing before you accept the next one.

Compliance certificates are now a perishable asset

This one is quietly costing plumbers money and almost nobody has adjusted for it.

You buy compliance certificates individually. For 2026-27 they are $41.90 each, with no GST. You need one for any plumbing work valued at $750 or more including labour, materials and GST, and regardless of value for below ground sanitary drains, gas appliance work, consumer gas piping and cooling towers.

Certificates bought from 22 September 2025 onwards expire 12 months after purchase. An unused, unlodged, expired certificate is wasted money. If you are in the habit of bulk buying a stack of certificates to get ahead, you are now buying stock that goes off, and the ones you do not use are a straight write off.

The signed certificate has to go to the customer and be lodged within five days of finishing the work. And as with electrical, you cannot withhold one as leverage over an unpaid invoice.

The six year tail that outlives your business

A licensed plumber has to carry insurance. The minimums are $5 million public liability, $50,000 for any one claim on domestic work and $100,000 on non domestic work, tied to the compliance certificate.

Here is the part that matters for anyone thinking about winding down or selling. Cover runs from when you agree to do the work until six years after the compliance certificate is issued. It has to continue for the full six years even if you stop operating.

So a sole trader who closes the doors still carries a six year exposure on every job certified before they left. That is a real succession and business sale consideration, and in our experience it is rarely factored into anyone's exit plan. If you are within six years of wanting out, it is worth modelling now.

Registered or licensed, and why it changes what you can charge for

The regulator is the Building and Plumbing Commission, formerly the Victorian Building Authority. Two different statuses, and the difference is commercial, not just technical.

Registered lets you carry out plumbing work in your classes. That is it. Licensed lets you do all of that plus design work, supervise apprentices, supervise other plumbers, and issue compliance certificates, in the classes you hold.

Which means a registered plumber cannot sign off their own work and cannot put an apprentice on. If you are planning to grow, the licence is not optional, it is the thing that lets the business scale past you.

For 2026-27: registration is $66.30 to apply and $416.30 for three years, a licence is $369.00 for twelve months. The licence is an annual cycle, so it is a recurring diary item, not a set and forget.

TPAR, and the test is 50% not 10%

Plumbing work, gas plumbing and hot water installation are all on the ATO's list of building and construction services, so if you pay subbies you will generally need to lodge a Taxable Payments Annual Report.

The 10% threshold tradies often quote is the wrong one. It applies to cleaning, couriers, IT and security. Yours is 50%, and you only need to meet one of three limbs: half or more of your income this year from building and construction, half or more of your business activity, or half or more of your income last year.

Due 28 August each year. The two things that most often make a software generated report wrong are materials only invoices, which are excluded, and invoices still unpaid at 30 June, which do not go in because it is the payment date that counts.

What your tradesperson and apprentice cost

Under the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award 2020 (MA000036), rates applied from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026.

A registered tradesperson level 1 is $1,246.54 a week or $32.80 an hour. Not registered, the same level is $1,201.78 or $31.63. Advanced tradesperson level 2, registered, is $1,410.54 a week. Those rates already include the industry, special fixed, plumbing trade and registration allowances, so do not add those again on top.

Apprentices who started after 1 January 2014 and did not finish year 12 run from $629.23 a week in first year to $1,099.48 in fourth. Adult apprentices are $1,046.31 for the first three years.

Allowances worth knowing: acting on a plumber's licence $1.53 an hour, tool allowance $22.96 a week, fares $16.24 a day, travel beyond a 50 kilometre radius at $0.55 a kilometre, and transfers between sites in your own vehicle at $1.00 a kilometre.

One that surprises people: there is no on call or standby allowance for plumbers under this award. The standby provisions apply to fire sprinkler fitters only. If you run an after hours roster, what you pay for it is a matter for the employment contract, not the award, and you need to have actually agreed it.

What a plumber really costs you is the wage plus 12% super, WorkCover, leave and leave loading, the van, fuel, tools, phone and their share of overheads, spread across the hours you can actually bill. Our hourly rate calculator runs that for each person and tells you the charge out rate you need.

Apprentices

Unlike electrical, there is no fixed numerical ratio limiting apprentices per qualified plumber in Victoria. The test is adequate supervision by a licensed plumber holding the relevant class, with the level of supervision matched to the apprentice's year and the risk of the work.

Plumbing is on the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List, so an employer incentive is available. The settings tighten on 1 January 2027 and apprenticeships started before then keep the current arrangements, so if you were taking one on anyway the timing is worth a look. We will check what you actually qualify for rather than quoting a headline number at you.

One thing to be clear about, because employers get caught by it: a large part of the apprenticeship money goes to the apprentice, not to you. Do not budget for it as business income.

Super changed on 1 July 2026

Payday super started. Super has to be paid each payday and land in the employee's fund within seven business days, instead of quarterly. For a plumbing business paying weekly or fortnightly with a couple of apprentices, that money now leaves considerably earlier than it used to. It is a cash flow change and it is worth modelling before it catches you out.

The super guarantee rate is 12% for 2026-27 and stays there.

Vans, tools and the write off

The $20,000 instant asset write off is permanent from 1 July 2026 for businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million, and it applies per asset. Anything $20,000 or over goes into the small business pool at 15% in the first year and 30% after. If the pool balance is under $20,000 at year end you can write it all off.

In practice that means tools, test equipment, a trailer and jetting gear get written off immediately, and the ute goes into the pool. Timing matters: the asset has to be first used or installed ready for use in the year you claim it.

What we actually do

We are registered tax agents in the Latrobe Valley, working with trades and small business owners across Australia. Lodgements done, on time, no surprises. Then the part that is worth paying for.

• TPAR prepared and lodged properly, not pulled raw out of your software.
• Tax planned through the BAS cycle so the bill is never a shock.
• Charge out rates worked out per person, including apprentices.
• Cash flow modelled around progress claims and retention, not just the profit and loss.
• Exit and succession planned with the six year insurance tail in it.
• Quoted up front, every time. You will never get an invoice you did not expect.

Questions plumbers ask us

This page is general information, current at the time of writing. It is not advice and it does not take your circumstances into account. Licensing, certificate and insurance requirements are set by the Building and Plumbing Commission and apply in Victoria only. Security of payment outcomes depend on the specific contract and most domestic building contracts are excluded. Award rates and fees change annually. Before you act on any of it, have your own position reviewed. Sources: the Australian Taxation Office, the Building and Plumbing Commission (formerly the Victorian Building Authority), the Fair Work Ombudsman award summary for MA000036, and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.