ATO benchmarks for bricklayers

The ATO's bricklaying group is businesses that lay bricks, cut and patch brickwork, and ready the ground before construction starts. Block layers, pavers and builders are not included. The key benchmark range for bricklayers is total expenses to turnover, which the ATO regards as its most accurate predictor of turnover in this trade.

A business lands here through its industry code and the words in its trading name and stated main activity. Operators below or above the ATO's turnover limits are excluded, along with anyone reporting a second line of business and anyone who had not finished a year of trading before the year started, and outliers are stripped out.

Turnover is what builders and homeowners pay for the work, excluding GST. What the ATO counts as total expenses has amounts paid to associated persons, like a family member on the tools, removed. No cost of sales figures are published for bricklayers. That ratio, which strips out salary and wages, is published only where the share of an industry reporting the cost clears the ATO's threshold, and service trades may report little of it.

So a bricklayer's costs gather in total expenses. Labourers' wages and payments to subcontract layers sit there, and the ATO also shows them as a separate labour benchmark. Scaffold hire, saw blades, mixer fuel, insurance and ute or truck running costs, which the ATO tracks as a motor vehicle benchmark, add to it. Bricks, sand and cement add to it only when the bricklayer buys them; where the builder supplies the bricks, the figure is mostly labour, vehicle and equipment costs.

Each band holds the bricklayers grouped around the mean for their turnover range; it is not a target or a limit, and the ATO publishes its edges as whole numbers. The ATO sets turnover ranges industry by industry, and for bricklayers they match in both years.

Moving up the turnover scale, the share rises steeply, and neighbouring bands touch at a single end at most. In 2023-24 there is a gap between each band and the next, while in 2022-23 the bottom band stands clear and the middle and top bands meet. The top band is the narrowest in both years. Set against 2022-23, both edges of the bottom and middle bands are lower in 2023-24, and both edges of the top band are higher.

Above the band, the ATO's reasons line up with how bricklaying costs behave. A crew kept on while a builder's schedule slips is labour that runs high for the work billed. Broken bricks and mortar mixed but never laid are wastage. Materials bought at a higher price than others pay, or rates set below what others charge, both lift the share. Bricks or cement used at the owner's own home but left in business costs count as goods taken for personal use. Cash from small jobs left unrecorded, or job cash spent on materials without the job being entered, raises it too.

Where the share is under the band, the ATO's list covers expenses left out, such as cash wages to a labourer or a subcontractor's invoice never entered, rates that carry a stronger mark-up, or a crew that works more efficiently. Ruling out the recording causes means confirming that:

• every supplier, hire and subcontractor invoice is in the books
• each builder's payments are matched to the invoices raised and the bank deposits
• cash wages and cash purchases of materials are recorded when they happen

Work from a whole financial year of the profit and loss: total expenses, minus payments to associated persons, as a share of turnover excluding GST. That share is then read against the band for the turnover range the business fell in that year.

A bricklayer just starting out, a set of figures covering less than a year, or an operator that reports block laying or paving as a separate activity sits outside the population the ATO measured. Heavy one-off spending, such as hiring extra scaffold for one unusually tall job, also pushes that year's share up.