FBT car parking threshold changes

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The ATO has released the Taxation Determination 2019/9, which outlines changes to the fringe benefits tax (FBT) car parking threshold.

The car parking threshold for the year commencing on 1 April 2019 is $8.95. This replaces the amount of $8.83 which applied to the FBT year ended 31 March 2019. The increase has been set by adjusting the previous year amount by a factor equivalent to the movement in the Consumer Price Index (1.3%).

Section 39A of the Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act 1986, sets out a number of conditions that must be met before car parking facilities provided by an employer to their employees will be subject to FBT. These conditions include:

  • A commercial car parking station is located within a one-kilometre radius of the employer-provided car park.
  • The lowest fee charged by the car park operator is more than the car parking threshold.
  • The car is parked for more than four hours between 7am and 7pm on any day.

There are circumstances where car parking benefits are exempt from FBT. These exemptions apply to:

  • Employers who meet the conditions of a small business entity.
  • Institutions of certain research, education, religion and charity.
  • Employees with a disability (irrespective of the type of employer).

The small business car parking benefits exemption applies where all of the following conditions are satisfied:

  • The parking is not provided in a commercial car park.
  • The employer qualifies as a small business with a gross total income for the last income year before the relevant FBT year of less than $10 million.
  • The employer is not a government body or listed public company.

Explaining The New Reporting Regime For The Sharing Economy

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The Sharing Economy Reporting Regime (SERR) represents a significant development in Australia’s tax landscape, requiring certain businesses operating in the sharing economy to report specific transactions to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

Commencing from 1 July 2023 for selected industries and expanding further from 1 July 2024, SERR aims to enhance tax compliance, increase transparency, and gather valuable insights into sharing economy activities. Let’s dive into the key aspects of SERR and outline what small businesses need to know to ensure compliance.

Scope and Purpose of SERR:

SERR applies to transactions facilitated through Electronic Distribution Platforms (EDPs), encompassing activities such as ride-sourcing, short-term accommodation, and the hiring of assets or services. The regime aims to collect information on transactions connected with Australia to enhance tax integrity, identify non-compliant participants, and inform compliance strategies.

What Is An Electronic Distribution Platform  (EDPs)

Under SERR, an EDP refers to a service that enables sellers to offer supplies to buyers through electronic communication channels. This encompasses various online platforms such as websites, internet portals, applications, and marketplaces. EDPs play a crucial role in facilitating transactions within the sharing economy and are central to the reporting requirements under SERR.

Reporting Obligations for EDP Operators

EDP operators are mandated to report details of transactions made through their platforms to the ATO. This includes transactions involving taxi travel, ride-sourcing, short-term accommodation, and other reportable supplies. EDP operators must submit reports for each reporting period, with deadlines set for 31 January and 31 July of the following year, depending on the reporting period.

Determining Reportable Transactions

Reportable transactions under SERR include supplies made through EDPs that are connected with Australia. This encompasses various activities, including ride-sourcing, short-term accommodation, asset rentals, and various services. However, certain transactions are exempt from reporting, such as those not connected with Australia or subject to specific withholding requirements.

Timing and Periods of Reporting

EDP operators must submit reports for each reporting period, covering transactions made within specific timeframes. Reporting periods run from 1 July to 31 December and from 1 January to 30 June, with corresponding deadlines for submission. The timing of reporting depends on when payments are made to suppliers, ensuring accuracy and alignment with transaction timelines.

Transition Period and Compliance Considerations:

The implementation of SERR involves a transition period, with different commencement dates for specific industries and reportable transactions. Small businesses affected by SERR should familiarise themselves with the reporting requirements, assess their obligations under the regime, and implement necessary systems and processes to ensure compliance.

The Sharing Economy Reporting Regime represents a significant regulatory change for small businesses operating in the sharing economy. By understanding the scope, purpose, and reporting obligations under SERR, businesses can navigate the complexities of the regime and ensure compliance with tax laws. With proper planning, small businesses can leverage SERR to enhance tax transparency, mitigate compliance risks, and contribute to a fair and efficient tax system.

Expert advice on early superannuation access as a result of COVID-19

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Under the coronavirus stimulus package released and revised by the Australian Federal Government on 22 March 2020, individuals in financial trouble due to the negative economic impacts of COVID-19 will be able to access their superannuation funds early. However, while the option is available, it is recommended that individuals only consider withdrawing from their super in the case of absolute emergencies and treat it as a last resort.

With the new rules on superannuation, workers whose incomes are reduced by at least 20% due to the COVID-19 outbreak are allowed to take $10,000 out of their super for the 2019-20 financial year and another $10,000 for 2020-21. Individuals will also not need to pay tax on any withdrawn amounts and existing welfare payments will not be affected either.

While the introduced early access to superannuation funds may be inviting for newly unemployed workers, it is important to consider whether the temporary relief is necessary and worth foregoing super funds available for long term investment. For example, even when accounting for Australia’s slowing economy in the coming years, $10,000 is predicted to be worth over $65,000 in another 30 years.

Especially for younger workers who are less likely to have access to other savings, the choice to give up future savings for current comfort is a difficult one. Experts instead are recommending Australians to apply for the other payments and benefits made available to vulnerable Australians through the coronavirus stimulus package, such as added $550 fortnightly supplements to Australians on JobSeeker payments and other welfare recipients and pensioners.

Experts also predict that the Australian Government will introduce more stimuli for increased cash flow in the Australian economy and more payments for unemployed, struggling and vulnerable Australians in the case of COVID-19 becoming more of a serious economic issue. Hence, withdrawing funds from your superannuation account should be considered a last resort and not for the sake of unnecessary temporary relief.

In addition to being allowed early access into individual super funds, superannuation minimum drawdown rates will also be temporarily reduced by 50% for account-based pensions and others similar until 2021.

The Government has also reduced the upper and lower social security deeming rates by a further 0.25 percentage points, with upper at 2.25% and lower at 0.25% which will come into effect on 1 May 2020.

Evaluating your social media campaign 

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The evaluation part of a social media campaign is often just as important as the campaign itself as it provides insights of consumer behaviours, sales data, and the failures and successes of the strategies and tactics implemented. This is crucial to your company’s future as it will help determine how the next campaign should run based on an analysis of previous campaigns.

People typically associate evaluations with the end of a project, however, it is important to have regular, ongoing evaluations of your social media campaign to see if any changes should be made earlier. Ongoing analytic tools can be already integrated into the social media platform such as Facebook insights, Youtube and Twitter analytics, or can be third-party apps such as Buffer Analyse, Sprout Social, and Zoho Social.

You can learn a lot about how your campaign is being received from measuring important metrics and KPIs. These include:

  • Engagement: The number of Likes, Comments, Shares, profile visits, and account mentions.
  • Follower or subscription decline/growth.
  • Reach and awareness: the amount of people you have reached both within and outside your audience.
  • Optimal times for engagement: daily activity and which days of the week your followers are most active.
  • Audience demographic: age, location, interests, gender, etc. of your audience.
  • Referral traffic: how many customers have come from your social media pages to your website.
  • Social conversions: when someone makes a purchase from visiting your social media page.
  • Click rates: number of clicks received on each post, showing which posts are more popular.

It is also useful to gather qualitative data by reading comments and replies to understand the overall customer sentiment towards your business and releasing customer feedback surveys. Survey questions could ask customers what they thought about the company, products, or services before and after the campaign, what they think could be improved, and how likely they are to recommend the company to a friend.

After gathering all this data, it is a good idea to create a social media campaign report, as well as graphs and charts to analyse the information and determine what parts of the campaign were successful, and what aspects could be improved.

Evaluating risks in business  

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Business owners are faced with constant challenges and tough decisions to make on a day-to-day basis. Risk-taking is often necessary to achieve more in the business, but owners need to make informed choices to avoid potential damages. To manage risk effectively, a proactive stance needs to be taken in identifying and responding to risks before a crisis strikes.

Identify risks:
The Australian standard defines risk as ‘the chance of something happening that will have an impact on objectives’. Risks can be hazard-based, uncertainty-based or opportunity-based, with both tangible and intangible items posing risks for your business. Owners may find it easy to list the physical items at risk such as assets and infrastructure, yet neglect intangibles such as injury to staff, loss of important business information, fraud, product recalls, supply chain disruptions and more. It is important for business owners to be aware of the risks they could face in their business.

Calculate your risks:
Making an educated assessment of both the likelihood and potential severity of risks can help prioritise your responses. Once the risks have been identified they should be ranked on the likelihood of occurrence and the severity of consequence it might impose on the business. This risk criteria helps to form a risk rating which can be ranked from low to extreme. The risk rating helps you to determine what situations need more time, attention and resources.

Manage your risks:
Finally, the risks need to be managed effectively. There are four ways of managing risk including avoiding the risk, transferring the risk, reducing the risk and accepting the risk. Avoidance is not always the best or viable solution as there is no way to ever be completely risk free. Transferring is a common way of avoiding damage as the risk is no longer your problem, for example, insurance and product warranties. Reduction of risk comes from a sound knowledge of your business and little things you can do that make a difference. Acceptance is for those owners with experience and a clear mind. Nothing in life is without risk, the business owners who accept this and learn from challenges are the ones who find success.

Ethical Investing: Is It For You?

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Ethical investing is gaining traction, with more and more investors selecting where their money will go based on their personal principles. This style of socially conscious investment holds companies accountable for their negative impacts and is driving many investors to select their investments dependent on their mutual shared values.

Ethical investing can align with moral, social, political, religious and environmental values, and takes them into account prior to making investment decisions. The primary objective of ethical investments is to create a positive impact by investing in companies that take environmental, social governance (ESG) and ethical issues into consideration and make an effort to address or prevent the business from contributing to the issues.

Rather than only receive a financial return on their investment, investors also receive a social conscious return that has an overall impact on them and the planet. 

There are two ways that ethical investing can be done. 

Personal Screening

An investor chooses to invest in industries/sectors/companies whose values align with their own values. As an example, they may look towards companies who are environmentally and socially conscious, who treat their workers fairly, have high governance standards and carry out environmentally sustainable practices.

Negative Screening

This is when an investor avoids industries whose values directly differ from their value – those involved in fossil fuels, gambling, military ammunition and tobacco are automatically crossed out from ethical investors’ choices. Treatment of workers can also determine to an ethical investor whether or not a company is worth investing in.

Ethical investing, while praiseworthy, needs to consider the soundness of their investments as well as their values. To examine whether the investment is sound and has the potential to reap significant returns, a review of a company’s history and finances is necessary. It is also important to confirm the firm’s commitment to its declared ethical practices and measures.

End-of-year Single Touch Payroll changes for employers

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Single Touch Payroll (STP) will change how employers report their employee’s end-of-year information to both employees and the ATO. The first year of STP for employers with 20 or more employees will soon come to an end at the completion of this financial year.

Employers that are reporting through STP will no longer need to:

  • Provide payment summaries to their employees for amounts reported and finalised through STP, as an income statement will get sent to employees’ ATO online services account (accessed through myGov) instead.
  • Lodge a PAYG payment summary annual report to the ATO for information that is reported and finalised through STP, as long as the finalisation declaration is completed by the due date.

Employers who started reporting through STP in the 2018-19 financial year will have until 31 July 2019 to make the finalisation declaration through their STP-enabled solution. The declaration states that you have completed your reporting for the financial year. Employers should ensure that all STP information is true and correct before making their finalisation declaration.

To get ready for end-of-year reporting, further things for employers to consider include:

  • The sooner that employees’ information is finalised, the sooner they will be able to lodge their tax returns.
  • Amendments should be made as soon as possible if any corrections need to be made to information after finalisation. This can be done by submitting an update event in your STP-enabled solution.

Employee payment summaries and PAYG payment summary annual reports are still required for all payments that are not reported and finalised through STP, due 14 July 2019 and 14 August 2019 respectively. Where further assistance is needed, registered tax agents can assist employers with their end-of-year STP reporting.

End Of FBT Year Is Approaching – Do You Know What Benefits You’re Giving Your Employees?

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As a part of your employees’ employment contracts, do they receive benefits such as a car space, gym membership or even a car to drive?

These are what’s known as fringe benefits, which is a ‘payment’ to an employee that takes a different form to salary or wages. This incurs a specific kind of tax separate from income tax known as fringe benefits tax, which is based on the taxable value of the fringe benefits provided. FBT applies even if the benefit is provided by a third party under an arrangement with the employer.

Knowing what is and what isn’t deemed as a fringe benefit will assist you in working out what you might provide to your employees as a benefit for working with you.

Examples Of Items That Are Fringe Benefits

  • Allowing an employee to use a work car for private purposes
  • Giving an employee a discounted loan
  • Paying an employee’s gym membership
  • Providing entertainment by way of free tickets to concerts
  • Reimbursing an expense incurred by an employee, such as school fees
  • Giving benefits under a salary sacrifice arrangement with an employee.

Examples Of Items That Are Not Fringe Benefits

The following are not fringe benefits:

  • Salary and wages
  • Shares purchased under approved employee share acquisition schemes
  • Employer contributions to complying super funds
  • Employment termination payments (including, for example, the gift or sale at a discount of a company car to an employee on termination)
  • Payment of amounts deemed to be dividends under Division 7A
  • Benefits provided to volunteers and contractors
  • Exempt benefits such as certain benefits provided by religious institutions to their religious practitioners.

Employees don’t have to worry about paying the tax on these items, but it is an area of concern that employers need to be careful of. Employers must self-assess their FBT liability for the FBT year (which ends 31 March) and lodge an FBT return.

Employers can generally claim an income tax deduction for the cost of providing fringe benefits and for the FBT they pay. However, there are ways in which you may be able to reduce your liability when it comes to FBT.

These methods include:

  • providing benefits that are income tax-deductible
    • If your employee is given a benefit that they could otherwise have claimed themselves.
  • using employee contributions
    • If your employees contribute to the cost of the FBT themselves through cash payment to the provider of the benefit, the taxable value of the fringe benefit can be reduced by that amount
  • by providing a cash bonus
    • If you provide your employee with a cash bonus instead of a benefit you won’t have to pay FBT, and the employee will pay income tax on the amount.
  • providing benefits that are exempt from FBT.

FBT exemptions can sometimes be changed by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), which can affect your FBT liability.

One such change was the FBT Retraining & Reskilling Exemption. Under this change, if you are an employer who is providing to their employees who are redundant (or soon to be made redundant) a benefit that encompasses training or education.

The exemption can be applied to retraining and reskilling benefits provided on or after 2 October 2020. This exemption is not to be included in your 2022 FBT return or in your employee’s reportable fringe benefits amount. If you have already lodged your 2021 FBT return though and paid any FBT owing, you can amend your 2021 FTB return to reduce the FBT paid for retraining and reskilling that is exempt.

It’s advisable to consult with a tax agent (such as us) if you need to amend an FBT return (as we are equipped with the tools and skills to negotiate what can be a tricky area filled with complexities and traps). Now’s the best time to speak with us about your FBT liability, what you might need to include in your return and more. Start a conversation with us today.

Employing A Talent Acquisition Strategy For Your Business’s Employment Needs

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It’s a daunting task, seeking someone who can fill a specific position that your business needs filled. It’s important that irrespective of how the economy is performing, the state of the workforce and what your business currently consists of, the employees that you hire are the best and most-talented people that you can get.

Though often we think of recruitment as a valid strategy of employment, it often seeks to fill gaps or vacancies that might be caused by staff turnover or insufficiency. This is still a valid strategy for businesses that need immediate solutions to staff/skill shortages.

However, hiring for your business shouldn’t just be about filling an immediate need – it’s about ensuring that your business attracts and retains talented employees for the long-term, to help your business grow to its full potential. A talent acquisition strategy should be put in place by your business to assist in addressing this issue.

Essentially, a talent acquisition strategy should be tailored to reflect and suit your business goals over the course of the next five years. It’s important to consider how the business is going to expand in the future, and what employees you need to join you in journeying towards that goal. Investing in the right talent now will pay off dividends for your business in the long term.

It’s all well and good to know what you need for your business in terms of talent – but how do you convince them to join you? Just as marketing campaigns are important for selling whatever your business produces, it’s important to consider how to market your business towards the talent you want to acquire.

There are plenty of ways to use data to strengthen your strategy, such as figuring out where your current top talent came from and using that information to focus your talent acquisition efforts on certain academic programs or professional networking sites. Data can also be used to refine job descriptions, career pages, emails and more, as it can eliminate in the application process any questions or phrasing that could be deterring qualified candidates.

Identifying where to find the majority of your top talent is an important step in the process of acquiring talent. It’s also important to ensure that you are utilising and expanding on our sourcing strategies when trying to find better talent.

Sometimes to recruit a skillset, you have to be a little adventurous in where to reach out to. Diversify your talent searching approach by looking outside of the usual LinkedIn profiles, and seeking out talent at specialised job boards, academic programs or networking events.

Above all, ensuring that your business has a reputation that draws potential talent is critical to engaging with those you want to acquire. Promoting aspects of your business that could draw in potential talent through multiple channels could be what convinces them to sign up with your business. Drawing attention to perks, the company culture and other work-life balance benefits or growth opportunities could be a way to highlight what sets you apart from the rest.

Employer liability in remote working conditions

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Now that businesses must have a better idea of the working conditions they will be adopting in 2021, it’s ideal to consider how employer liability changes. 

The health and safety of employees in the workplace is the responsibility of the employer. Employers must protect their employees’ well-being, by taking into consideration the risks involved on the premises where employees work.

If there are employees who will be consistently working from home, or who usually work remotely, then there are some things that employers can do: 

  • Ensure that the work expected of employees from home can be done so with safety
  • Consider making changes to the task so that it can be done safely from home
  • Employees are equipped with the tools and equipment necessary to complete the work safely (this could also include ergonomic computer equipment)
  • Arrangements are made to instal heavy company equipment into the employee’s workspace safely rather than be left to the responsibility of the employee. 
  • Employees have been given the relevant information or been trained to operate all equipment provided to the employees with safety. 
  • Reasonable accommodations have been made for employees who might have disabilities in relation to the work employees are expected to perform. 
  • More steps are taken to ensure employees’ mental welfare

Employee welfare is particularly important when remote working is involved. This is because employees might have no contact with their co-workers and have limited scope. Try to find ways through which employees can interact with one another whilst working remotely. Further, ensure that employees can access mental health support easily if they need it.

Keeping these things in mind will not only protect employers from liability but ensure that employees are being productive.