From 1 Jan 2017 a new tax table applies in a limited number of circumstances.

For full details see here on the ATO's website.

In summary the new table only applies if:

• an employee has a specific visa which allows the individual to work in Aust, and
• as an Employer, you have registered with the ATO to employ at Working Holiday Maker rates

The new tax rate is applied in an unusual way. Unlike traditional marginal rate thresholds, the applicable rate it is not based on the weekly/fortnightly/monthly amount being paid, rather on the total paid to date. For example an employer is required to deduct a flat 15% if total payments they have made to the employee for the income year so far are less than $37001. Once the total paid to date equals or exceeds $37001, the flat rate changes to 32.5%.

Note: How much the employee has earned from other employers does not matter. The withholding requirements are based purely on how much you have paid this employee.

FGH Tables will NOT be releasing new tax tables for Working Holiday Makers as existing versions of MYOB® do not support a tax table with such a rate structure. Existing versions of MYOB® are based on tax tables with a marginal tax rate structure where the thresholds are annualised.

Withholding Variation
For those employers affected, the new tax table can be easily accommodated within existing versions of MYOB® by using the Withholding Variation table. Simply set the employee’s tax table to Withholding Variation and set the rate as shown in the image below:



The rate shown here is 15%. If your are likely to exceed $37k in total for this employee, you will need to keep track of total payments separately. Then once amounts paid to this employee for the income year equal or exceed $37001, change the rate to 32.5% for subsequent payments. Same applies for those employees subject to a rate of 37% and 47%.

Note: If payments were made to an employee under the previous arrangements and after 1 January 2017 they are to be taxed as a Working Holiday Maker, you will need to issue 2 payment summaries to this employee. If this is the case, we suggest creating a new Employee Card and use this for payments after 1 Jan 2017. Contact us or the ATO is you require further information.

Payment Summaries
For those employers affected by payments to Working Holiday Makers, a new Payment Summary type will be required. Existing versions of MYOB® do not support this Payment Summary type. We recommend using EMPDUPE Maker from Namich for this purpose. The current cost of this program is $65 and more details are available here.

This program will allow you to open the EMPDUPE file generated by your existing version of MYOB®, make changes for the affected employees, and generate new Payment Summaries and a new EMPDUPE file.

Namich has released an updated version of EMPDUPE Maker (Release 4) to support the new 2017 Payment Summary requirement for Working Holiday Maker payments.