This special edition of our newsletter is to remind you of your 2019 financial year employer obligations and provide you with an update on employment matters:-

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

1. SINGLE TOUCH PAYROLL ("STP")

STP is a Government initiative to further simplify business reporting obligations. It is a mandatory reporting requirement for employers and will require employers to report payments such as salaries and wages, pay as you go (PAYG) withholding and superannuation information to the Australian Taxation Office (“ATO”) directly from their payroll systems at the same time employees are paid. It will eventually apply to every payroll system in Australia.

The Federal Budget has been delivered and has focused on infrastructure and essential services spending as well as income tax relief for low and middle income earners and business tax relief. Unsurprisingly (on the eve of a federal election), the budget is a somewhat safe and uneventful one, and rather than containing any major changes to the current tax base, has focused on minor tweaks and changes to what we already have.

As with all Budgets, these are announcements only and have not been legislated. The details are still to be worked through, and both Houses of Parliament need to pass legislation before the announcements take effect. Parliament won’t consider these announcements until after the Federal election, expected in May this year, so more than normal, the passage from announcement to legislation is uncertain.

The key tax (personal and business related) and superannuation highlights of last night’s Budget are summarised below:-

The FBT year ends on 31 March 2019 and each employer is required to calculate their liability for FBT. Where a liability for FBT exists, an annual return is required to be lodged and any tax paid by 21 May 2019. However, if the return is lodged electronically by a Tax Agent the due date of lodgement is 25 June 2019 while the payment due date is 28 May 2019.

In our May 2018 special edition newsletter, we discussed the tax policies of the major political parties in Australia at that time. This was back when newspapers and online media were fervently covering the major issue being proposed by the Labor party; that of cancelling tax refunds arising from excess imputation (or franking) credits.

As the Federal election is drawing ever nearer (and the prospect of a change in Government seems ever more likely!) we thought that we should revisit some of the more significant policy proposals as some of you may be substantially affected by them if they become law (and could apply from 1 July this year!)

Bob Deutsch Senior Tax Counsel of the Taxation Institute of Australia recently said “The next Federal election is looming as one of the most important elections in recent times particularly having regard to the differences between the two alternatives on tax policy.”

We have summarised the major parties tax policies for you and given some brief explanations in each of the following links: