The 2021 FBT return for the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 is due soon. For those businesses that prepare their own returns, lodgment of the return can be made up until 25 June 2021 without incurring a failure to lodge on time penalty. Although the associated FBT liability must be paid by 21 May 2021, and general interest charge will apply to any payments made after that date.

Businesses that have not paid FBT before are required to make the payment in a lump sum for the year on 21 May. This also applies to those that have aid FBT in the previous year, but the liability was less than $3,000. For those that paid $3,000 or more in the previous year, the FBT liability will be paid in quarterly instalments with your activity statements in the following year with the balancing payment to be made on 21 May.

Your business is required to lodge an FBT return if it had an FBT liability for the year, or if the business did not vary FBT instalments to nil for the year and did not have an FBT liability. Lodging the return will ensure that any FBT instalment credits you paid during the year will be refunded. If your business is registered with the ATO as a FBT payer and your FBT taxable amount is nil with no instalments paid during the year, instead of the FBT return, you can lodge a notice of non-lodgment – Fringe benefits tax.

Businesses should beware that while there has been a lot of announcements of changes in FBT, many of these proposed changes are not yet law. In those instances, businesses are required to apply the current legislation and make the appropriate amendments when the changes do become law.

For example, the government recently announced a FBT exemption for employer provided retraining and reskilling benefits provided to redundant (or soon to be redundant) employees where the benefits may not be related to their current employment. While this change is intended to apply from the date of announcement once enacted, the ATO notes that businesses are required to apply the current legislation and amend their returns later if necessary.

Similarly, businesses should be aware of application dates of recently enacted law changes. The change to allow businesses with less than $50m turnover to access certain existing FBT small business concessions do not apply for the 2021 FBT year, rather they apply to benefits provided to employees from 1 April 2021 onwards (ie the 2022 FBT year).

In addition, the ATO has not finalised its ruling on car parking fringe benefits that deal with changes to contemporary commercial car parking arrangements and various decisions of the Federal Court. This means that the view from the withdrawn ruling will continue to apply until the new ruling is issued. The ATO estimates that a final Ruling will be published by mid-June 2021 with the changes to apply from 1 April 2022.