Utes and commercial vehicle exemption
The new safe harbour to avoid FBT
When an employer provides an employee with the use of a car or other vehicle then this would generally be treated as a car fringe benefit or residual fringe benefit and could potentially trigger an FBT liability.
However, the FBT Act contains some exemptions which can apply in situations where certain vehicles (utes and other commercial vehicles for example) are provided and the private use of the vehicles is limited to work-related travel, and other private use that is ‘minor, infrequent and irregular’.
One of the practical challenges when applying the exemption is how to determine if private use has been minor, infrequent and irregular. The ATO recently released a compliance guide that spells out what the regulator will look for when reviewing the use of the exemption.
The ATO has indicated that in general, private use by an employee will qualify for the exemption where:
- The employer provides an eligible vehicle to the employee to perform their work duties. An eligible vehicle is generally a vehicle for commercial purposes. The requirements are very strict and guidance on this is published on the ATO website.
- The employer takes reasonable steps to limit private use and they have measures in place to monitor this – this might be a policy on the private use of vehicles that is monitored using odometer readings to compare business kilometres and home to work kilometres travelled by the employee against the total kilometres travelled.
- The vehicle has no non-business accessories – for example a child safety seat.
- The value of the vehicle when it was acquired was less than the luxury car tax threshold ($75,526 for fuel-efficient vehicles in 2017-18 and $65,094 for other vehicles).
- The vehicle is not provided as part of a salary sacrifice arrangement; and
- The employee uses the vehicle to travel between their home and their place of work and any diversion adds no more than two kilometres to the ordinary length of that trip, they travel no more than 750 km in total for each FBT year for multiple journeys taken for a wholly private purpose and, no single, return journey for a wholly private purpose exceeds 200 km.
If you meet all these specifications, the ATO has stated that it will not investigate the use of the FBT exemption further. However, the employer will still need to keep records to prove that the conditions above have been satisfied and to show that private use is restricted and monitored.
