Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) can be a complex area for many businesses because it requires attention to all sorts of employee benefits and associated expenses. In this post, we’ll show you all the questions you should add to your FBT form.
More importantly, we give you an editable FBT questionnaire. All it takes is to sign up for a free Content Snare trial and use our questionnaire template right now.
FBT questionnaire — instructions
Before asking questions, it’s best to provide simple instructions to help your client understand the purpose of the questionnaire. This is important because some businesses aren’t familiar with the concept of fringe benefits tax and the corresponding terminology.
| Note: You can read ATO’s guide for employers for more details about fringe benefits tax. |
For example, instructions can include the following details:
- The FBT year
- The definition of fringe benefits tax
- An explanation of what “employee” means in this context
Here’s an example of how Content Snare introduces the concept of FBT in its ready-made questionnaire template:
FBT questions to ask your clients
Motor vehicles
1. Do you provide private use of any vehicle to any employee?
A car benefit occurs when an employer provides a car for personal use to a director, employee, or their associate (like a non-working spouse). This includes keeping the car at home or using it for travel to and from work.
Entertainment
2. Did you provide any form of entertainment to any employee?
For the purposes of FBT, "Entertainment" means food, drink, and recreation provided to employees.
Expenses on behalf of employees
3. Have you paid or reimbursed any private expenses for any employees?
This includes the use of frequent flyer or other points, when they are used for the purchase of non-work related expenses or items.
Loans to employees
4. Have you loaned money to any employee, or forgiven any debts owed to you by them?
A loan fringe benefit arises when you provide a loan to an employee and charge a low-interest rate (or no interest) during the FBT year. A low rate of interest is less than the statutory rate of interest (also known as the benchmark interest rate).
Car parking
5. Did you provide car parking facilities, or pay for parking in any commercial car park, for any employee?
6. What is the address of the car parking facility?
7. How many car parks were provided to employees?
8. How many of the car parks in the previous question were provided to employees with disabilities?
9. What hours were cars parked in the facility each day?
10. How many days was parking provided to employees during the year?
11. Is there another commercial car park within 1km of the car park provided to employees?
12. What is the lowest fee for all-day parking (including GST) charged by any commercial car park within 1km?
13. Can the general public park free of charge all day on your premises?
14. Did any employees reimburse you for the cost of car parking?
15. What was the total amount reimbursed by all employees?
Airline transport
16. Did you provide any discounted or free airline travel to any employee?
This includes the use of frequent flyer or other points, for the purchase of non-work related flights.
Housing, board, living away from home allowances
17. Did you provide any housing-related benefits to any employees?
This includes:
- Housing (eg rent) for an employee's usual place of residence
- Accommodation and/or meals as a result of entitlement under an industrial relations award or employee agreement
- Allowances paid as compensation for living away from home
Property benefits
18. Did you provide any free or discounted goods or other property to any employee
Property in this context includes:
- Goods, such as items of clothing (but not uniforms), televisions, etc.
- Real property, such as land and buildings
- Financial assets, such as shares, bonds, or crypto
Other benefits
19. Did you provide any employee with any other benefit?
Examples can include (but are not limited to) the use of your property for personal use, insurance coverage, etc. Do not include anything that has already been noted as any more specific benefit above.
Customise your FBT questionnaire with Content Snare
The questions listed above are enough to create an FBT form, but you can make it much better and more instructional using Content Snare.
It’s a professional online form builder with 50+ questionnaire templates for accounting firms, bookkeepers, financial advisers, and many other types of businesses. Content Snare contains a built-in FBT questionnaire template with detailed explanations for clients on how to fill out the form:
This FBT template is fully customisable, which means you can delete, edit, or add as many fields as you want to make for a better user experience.
But that’s not even the best part — Content Snare will speed up your data collection process by automatically reminding clients to fill out the questionnaire. This means you won’t have to chase clients for files or information ever again.
We also give you a two-week trial to play with our FBT questionnaire template and collect some info from your clients. We’re sure you’re going to love it!
