How are Fringe Benefits reported with STP?

With the Fringe Benefits Tax year ending on 31 March, you may be wondering how FBT reporting fits in with Single Touch Payroll standards.

Fortunately, nothing much changes compared to the old payment summary reporting process. If you follow the same processes as you have previously the only thing to be prepared for is the potential for employee confusion.

There are two possible approaches to reporting fringe benefits depending on whether you use Benefits pay items in Sybiz Visipay or enter figures manually in employee records.

If using Benefits pays items, once you process your first pay run after rolling into April your employees with reportable fringe benefits will start to see relevant amounts in their MyGov accounts. These amounts will remain static for the remainder of the financial year and may cause confusion in cases where employees are continuing to receive Fringe Benefits from April to June. Some employees may expect the amounts to continue to increase for the remainder of the financial year.

If rather than using Benefits pay items, you enter the reportable fringe benefits amounts in employee records, these amounts will begin to show in STP records from the point in time you enter them in employee records. There is no urgency to do this, just so long as the amounts are entered after rolling to April and prior to completing the final event indicator process for the financial year.

If you have any more queries about Single Touch Payroll you can check out our FAQs.