Salary Packaging - Offset Account

I'm pretty confident the employer is trying to provide an expense payment fringe benefit. If it is properly documented I don't see any issues with the reimbursement of expenses going into an employee's saving account. However, this is the not-for-profit sector and many employers in this space don't have the resources to ensure everything is done correctly and is properly documented. I'm sure there are some payments which are intended to be fringe benefits that are actually taxable salary and wages.

 

Expense payment fringe benefit perhaps. eg repay school fees paid by taxpayer. But simply crediting a employee account with $ is not a fringe benefit. I believe the key issue is that the employee or a 3rd party must have incurred a private expense (deductible or not) prior to the expense payment.

The concern that can occur here is that if the expense is incurred on a corporate card it wont be an expense payment benefit since its not incurred by the employee first.
Expense payment fringe benefits | Australian Taxation Office

 

Corporate card would simply be another type of benefit such as a residual benefit.

Simply paying money into an employee's savings account would not be an expense payment benefit unless the employee vouches for the particular expense. Most likely simply salary and wages.

 

I miss the days of the laptop double dip. Damn ALP (Rudd) got rid of that.

 

anyway for the SP company to pay a credit card?

Wife and I have no bad debt. Only type of bad debt is a credit card that gets paid in full each month, and if her company can pay a portion of her salary directly towards this, would there be a benefit?

She is employed at an Australian Charity, and gets some type of FBT benefit, where a portion of her salary is paid to a Bendigo bank account. Apparently this is 16-18k and isnt taxed, but has to spend all of it before a certain date each year, otherwise she gets taxed on it.

Currently she just paypals to me this amount each fortnight and makes its way back to our normal transactional account - wondering if her employer can pay directly to our credit card, resulting in some taxtion benefit?

 

It would seem that she already gets a tax benefit through the Bendigo facility and changing it wont improve a thing. FBT package managers work to strict rules and they likely wont credit anything they cant control.

 

Which company manages the salary packaging?

SmartSalary, for example, will reimburse you for prior credit card expenses (which you've already paid off) directly into your bank account. All you need to do is provide them with a copy of your credit card statement showing the payment.