The Paid Parental Leave Scheme started on 1 January 2011 and provides 18 weeks of government-funded pay to eligible employees.
The rate of pay is equivalent to the national minimum wage. Full-time, part-time, casual, seasonal, contract and self-employed workers may be eligible. Parents can lodge a claim up to three months in advance.
The Family Assistance Office may contact you if one of your employees is eligible. From 1 July 2011, you will be required to provide parental leave pay to your eligible employees (funds will be provided to you in advance).
To get your business ready, register now at www.centrelink.gov.au and search for ‘Centrelink business online services’.
So above are the government details, but how does QuickBooks deal with this? Really quite simply, once you have been advised that one of your employees is eligible for the scheme, you use the payroll item called Paid Parental Leave and replace their normal payroll item with it for the duration of the paid leave.
Remember when you set the payroll item to an account, it is not your money, but money received from Family Assistance and is owed to them until you pay an employee with it, so think about how to best reflect that.
The Flood Levy commenced from July 1st 2011. Whilst this has been introduced and now a month into force, there are still questions like, who has to pay the tax etc.
QuickBooks and Payroll Premier are both compliant from the taxation point of view.
QuickBooks assumes any employee who is in the catchment of the levy is unless you tick in the Employee Centre >Tax>Flood Levy Exempt.
Payroll Premier you tick in the Employee options they pay the levy.
Visit this part of the ATO website to have the questions answered.
http://www.ato.gov.au/content/00276059.htm?headline=floodlevy&segment=home
So compliant information, and hopefully, another way to make your QuickBooks products work for you.
