Monday 13 March - Creating Confidence In How People Are Paid

Newsbite: Changes to Australia’s paid parental leave pass Parliament

Australia’s Paid Parental Leave policy has been amended following its passage through Parliament.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 was approved by the House of Representatives in February and the Senate on March 6.

According to Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth, the changes, which come into effect in July 2023, will provide a single Paid Parental Leave scheme with a flexible 20-week entitlement for working parents.

Parents will be able to access the entitlement in multiple blocks, with periods of work in between, offering greater flexibility on leave.

Additionally, the requirement that the primary PPL claimants must be the birth parent will be eliminated, expanding the PPL entitlements granted to single parents to 20 weeks, up from the current 18.

The new family income test of $350,000 per annum will also extend the PPL policy’s eligibility to nearly 3,000 additional parents.

The amendments are part of the government’s plan to expand the country’s paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2026.

Newsbite: New shutdown rules for 78 modern awards

The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has varied 78 modern awards as part of the Commission’s 4-yearly review of modern awards process by replacing existing shutdown clauses with a new model term. See the full list of varied awards at the bottom of this page.

These clauses relate to an employer’s ability to direct employees to take a period of annual leave where the employer shuts down all or part of its enterprise. The changes are:

• Any mechanism that directs an employee to take leave without pay during a temporary shutdown period has been removed;
• The circumstances in which a temporary shutdown can occur have been narrowed to where the employer intends to shut down all or part of its operation for a particular period and the employer wishes to require affected employees to take paid annual leave during that period. Certain model terms still preserve the entitlement to shut down operations in some industry-specific circumstances, including for example when a drilling rig is being repaired in the Hydrocarbons Industry (Upstream) Award 2020;
• Employers must now provide at least 28 days’ written notice of the temporary shutdown period (or a longer period if the term preserves an existing longer period of notice);
• If an employee is engaged within the 28-day notice period, notice of the temporary shutdown must be provided as soon as reasonably practicable after engagement.
• Any direction by the employer to take annual leave must now be in writing and be reasonable.
• Employees can now only take paid annual leave in accordance with a direction under the shutdown term.
• The model term allows the employer and employee to agree, in writing, to take unpaid leave during a shutdown period once an employee’s paid annual leave has been exhausted.
• Where an employee has not accrued enough paid annual leave to cover the period of the shutdown, the employee may take paid annual leave in advance of accruing the entitlement in accordance with the existing “annual leave in advance” term contained in each modern award.
• The new terms confirm that when calculating the amount of paid annual leave accrued by an employee, any leave taken in advance pursuant to the “annual leave in advance” clause must be taken into account.
• New shutdown clauses now confirm that periods of annual leave taken for the purposes of a temporary shutdown do not apply for the purposes of the existing excessive leave provisions contained in modern awards.

Employers with employees covered by the 78 modern awards impacted by the decision should take the following steps to prepare for and accommodate the incoming changes on 1 May 2023:

• Review any current procedures and guidelines in regards to annual shutdowns and update materials relating to award-covered employees impacted by the changes.
• Have a discussion with your HR team or business partners regarding the future change. This includes factoring in the updated notice periods and requirements to take paid leave.
• Update Payroll and employee management systems to ensure employees can access leave in advance and ensure that employees’ annual leave entitlements are being properly accrued and accounted for.

You can read the decision here: https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/decisionssigned/html/2022fwcfb246. htm

End of Year training for Payroll Professionals

Australian Payroll Association have released dates of their virtual End of Year training sessions. Dates are as follows:

• End of Year Virtual Classroom - 8 June 2023 (10:00AM AEST to 2:00PM AEST) - Webinar More details/Book Now
• End of Year Virtual Classroom - 13 June 2023 (10:00AM AEST to 2:00PM AEST) - Webinar More details/Book Now

2023 - Australian Payroll Summit

The Australian Payroll Summit is only three weeks away. You can still get a virtual or in person ticket (Luna Park, Sydney) to this event with a great line up of speakers and exhibitors.

Click here for more information including the speaker line up - Click Here.

Newsbite: Changes to Australia’s paid parental leave pass Parliament

Australia’s Paid Parental Leave policy has been amended following its passage through Parliament.

The Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Bill 2022 was approved by the House of Representatives in February and the Senate on March 6.

According to Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth, the changes, which come into effect in July 2023, will provide a single Paid Parental Leave scheme with a flexible 20-week entitlement for working parents.

Parents will be able to access the entitlement in multiple blocks, with periods of work in between, offering greater flexibility on leave.

Additionally, the requirement that the primary PPL claimants must be the birth parent will be eliminated, expanding the PPL entitlements granted to single parents to 20 weeks, up from the current 18.

The new family income test of $350,000 per annum will also extend the PPL policy’s eligibility to nearly 3,000 additional parents.

The amendments are part of the government’s plan to expand the country’s paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2026.

Payroll Compliance

Our complimentary Payroll Pulse Check is specifically designed to identify areas of risk or underperformance in your payroll operation. This will assist you to optimise and reduce the risk in your payroll function before any issues become expensive to fix problems. Your emailed report is easy to digest with recommendations that are actionable immediately.

It’s free and takes less than 5 minutes - click here to access.

Backpay: Wesfarmers Workers Awarded $4.8M

Wesfarmers are paying $4.8 million to more than 3,400 current and ex-employees after underpayments that stretched over a decade.

The underpayments occurred between 2010 and 2020, and amount to $4,836,036 — including penalty rates, annual leave and overtime — plus $246,779 in superannuation.

Under an agreement with the Fair Work Ombudsman, the back payments will be made to former and current employees from Wesfarmers Industrial and Safety group, who noticed the discrepancy in 2019 after installing a new payroll system.

Wesfarmers self-reported the underpayments, which FWO confirmed was due to “payroll system errors adopted by WIS in the course of its acquisition of various employing entities in 2013 and 2014, which it failed to correct”.

“This matter demonstrates how important it is for employers to identify and fix non-compliance in their processes, including the continued use of out-of-date and unsupported software systems and the incorrect interpretation and creation of pay rules,” Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said.

“Businesses who fail to invest the time and resources to ensure they are meeting all lawful entitlements risk facing large-scale back-payment bills.”

The average underpayment was $1,392, with the highest individual underpayment $38,362.

Wesfarmers must pay all back pay, plus interest of $1,476,827, by the end of the month.

Payroll Question & Answer

Question. Is a laptop exempt from Fringe Benefit Tax?

Answer. Portable electronic devices that are mainly used for work purposes are exempt from fringe benefits tax (FBT). The exemption applies to one item per FBT year for items with a substantially identical function (unless it is a replacement item). However, small businesses can provide employees with more than one work-related portable electronic device in an FBT year – even if they have substantially identical functions. A small business is a business with an aggregated turnover of less than $50 million in an income year that starts or ends in the relevant FBT year. A portable electronic device is a device that:

? is easily portable and designed for use away from an office environment

? is small and light

? can operate without an external power supply

? is designed as a complete unit.

To learn more about FBT, join our FBT and Salary Packaging course - Click Here.

Australian Payroll Association - 2023