We spend quite a lot of time on this blog criticising the transport policies of Central Government, so it’s really great to finally have something to praise. Yesterday’s announcement that fringe benefit taxes will generally be applied to all parking perks is a great step in the right direction of levelling the playing field between transport modes:
The Government is targeting employer-provided carparks as it moves to tighten the tax rules on perks used as trade-offs for salary.
Revenue Minister Peter Dunne announced today that Cabinet had made its final decisions on the suggestions outlined in an April 2012 issues paper Recognising salary trade-offs as income.
“We have listened to public submissions and the proposed new rules are now narrower than originally suggested, focusing predominantly on employer-provided carparks,” Dunne said.
The specific changes would tax more carparks provided to employees through the FBT (Fringe Benefit Tax) rules, mainly in the Auckland and Wellington central business districts where the benefits to the employee are greatest.
There will be exclusions for carparks used by work vehicles, for late night shifts and disabled carparks. A standard value will be put on a carpark when it is not provided through a commercial carpark operator.
The new rules will replace the current on-premises/off-premises distinction for determining whether a carpark is subject to FBT.
I’d love to see a situation where all employees are given the choice of on-site parking or a paid public transport pass or the extra cash in hand. Hopefully as employers will now have no tax advantages in providing their staff with parking spaces compared to providing them with a HOP card or just paying them a bit more, we might actually see this happen. Of course we also need to stop regulations forcing employers to provide each and every one of their staff with a parking space too.
> a paid public transport pass
As a small employer, I’d like to see AT help companies manage/issue/top-up cards centrally – make it easy for companies to offer this sort of thing to their staff.
Yes! Online top ups essential; and being able to “link cards” e.g. to one company.
Fantastic, well done gov. Of course this is because it is from the revenue officials not the seemingly lumpen and dinosauric Ministry of Transport.
Now this paves the way for AT to build a sales and marketing team to directly offer businesses staff (real) HOP card deals for their renumeration packages. Once Integrated fares are in place. Civilisation here we come…..
in the UK you can get a govt subsidy through your employer on a bike worth up to a thousand pinds if it is to be used for commuting
Oh why oh why cannot we have that here?
That’d pay for the lions share of my roadie!
um, that should read pounds
Some people would love a subsidy of a thousand pints! Though that might negate the safety and health benefits of more bike riding!
Another good announcement by the Government: All children will need to have seat restraints until age 7, up from 5 years.
I work night shift.
My company pays for non dedicated spots in Sky City Federal St for shifts beginning between 2030 and 0630 and ending between 2200 and 0630.
Times that in most cases don’t allow the use of public transport because AT in their “wisdom” won’t provide a decent service.
Sorry Chris – don’t see how your comment is relevant? This does not stop you from driving, it just creates a level playing field so that employers are not incentivised to give parking away over, say, monthly public transport pass. They can still chose to do so if they wish.
I can’t believe Labour have been daft enough to claim this is a bad move, as reported in the Herald today:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10838268
C’mon, sort it out. Just as well the Greens are on the case.
Mr Dunne: “If it’s a carpark that’s got your name on it, or if there are 10 people in a building that has 10 carparks, it will apply. If there are 20 people in 10 carparks … then no, it won’t apply in that situation because it’s not particular to that individual employee.”
There are a lot of bigger companies that have more employees than carparks so there will be many cases where this FBT doesn’t apply. Of course the top execs are likely to have nominated parks just for themselves but I’m sure they’ll find some kind of loophole.
I’ve always thought that the best option is just to have the businesses directly pay for the transport of employees to and from work. This would encourage two things: 1.) Increased density in housing (businesses will look for people who actually live closer to the work place) and 2.) public transport as the cheaper, more rational option becomes the choice of the businesses.