What is harmonisation?
Pay-roll tax harmonisation involves changes to Queensland's pay-roll tax legislation to harmonise key aspects of Queensland’s pay-roll tax system with those of other jurisdictions with effect from 1 July 2008. The changes implement measures which are currently in place in NSW & VIC, who harmonised their pay-roll tax systems on 1 July 2007.
What is changing?
The following are changes effected by the harmonisation measures:
- introduction of relevant contracts provisions;
- changes to the grouping provisions;
- introduction of employee share acquisition scheme provisions;
- adoption of specific third party payment provisions;
- inclusion of ‘remuneration’ in the general definition of ‘wages’;
- amendment of the exclusion of wages for work performed ‘outside Australia’ to ‘in another country’;
- inclusion of termination payments to non-employee directors;
- inclusion of superannuation payments to non-employee directors;
- changes to the employment agent provisions;
- new exemption for paid parental and adoption leave;
- new exemption for bushfire fighting and emergency volunteers;
- new exemption for volunteer honorary ambulance officers;
- new exemption for the Community Development Employment Project;
- an increase to the motor vehicle allowance exemption rate;
- an increase to the accommodation allowance exemption rate;
- change to using the type 2 gross-up factor for valuing fringe benefits.
What about the tax rate and threshold?
These are not changing as a result of the harmonisation measures. Queensland will keep its low rate of 4.75% and threshold of $1,000,000.
