2017 Payment Summaries - Question about FBT exemption - guidleines for answering it

[Kym__Yeoward]

On the Australian 2017 Individual Non-Business Payment Summary, there's this question:

"Is the exmployer exempt from FBT under section 57A of the FBTAA 1986 ?

 Yes ......... [check box]      No..........[check box]"

The ATO's current guidelines for completing 2017 payment summaries say: 

- Answer "Yes" where the employer is a PBI, a public hospital or a hospital run by an association or employer that is a rebatable employer, a health promotion charity or a public ambulance service

- Answer 'No" if the employer is not one of the above

- Leave both boxes blank if you do not have any reportable fringe benefits amount to report.

I feel that the Tax Office's instructions are confusing for software developers and pay office staff,

as there is no additional wording on the payment summary,

such as a line below, saying  "Leave these boxes blank, if there were no reportable finge benefits".

I have reported this issue to the Tax Office on their new ATO Community Forum,

as payroll system developers and t,he tax office help desk, are soon going to be inundated by queries from payroll staff, about how to handle these boxes, when preparing their payment summaries.

In the meantime, I hope these comments help.

Could I suggest an urggent Support Note about this ?

Kym Yeoward

Darwin

[Neil_M]

Hi Kym ( @Kym__Yeoward )

Thanks for your comments around clarifying that question on the Payment Summaries, I have passed your feedback along to our team who do monitor our help articles and they are reviewing your comments.

We do have a couple of really good help articles around FBT for both our AccountRight and MYOB Essentials products, which I am sure you have seen before but just in case I have linked them both below:

AccountRight - Payment summaries: Reportable fringe benefit

MYOB Essentials - Producing PAYG payment summaries

Please do feel free to let us know if you feel that our help articles do not encompass a particular aspect of reporting FBT, so that we can ensure our help articles remain as helpful as possible.

[Kym__Yeoward · Accepted solution]

Also see these guidelines I received yesterday from tha Australian Tax Office Community Forum:

" This section of the Individual Non-business Payment Summary describes how reportable FBT can affect family assistance and youth income support payments, especially when an employee may have 57A exempt duties for part of the FBT year or where reportable FBT is below the cap.

The selection of Yes, No and blank allows for:

- indicating the exemption (YES)

- despite working for an organisation that is exempt, the employee did not work in a role eligible for the 57A exemption (NO)

- where the employee received FBT but it was below the reportable cap or did not receive any FBT (BLANK).

There is also some helpful information about What are the consequences of having fringe benefits reported on your payment summary on the ATO website. "