Salary Packaging Card
A salary packaging card gives you immediate access to your pre-tax funds at the point of sale. It works just like a MasterCard. Following a quick and easy setup, your allocated funds will be loaded onto your salary packaging card by your provider. From there, simply tap-and-go to pay for a wide range of standard living expenses – holidays included. Your card will allow you to pay for two types of benefits – Living Expenses and Entertainment Benefits.
Living Expenses
Eligible hospital and healthcare workers can package a maximum amount of $9,010 in capped expenses each year, and employees in not-for-profit PBI organisations (Aged Care, Disability Services, Charities) can package up to $15,900.
Living Expenses are considered everyday costs incurred by you or your family:
· Groceries
· Fuel
· Bills
· Clothing
· Household Items
· Transport
· More
Entertainment Benefits
Entertainment Benefits consist of meals, entertainment, hotel accommodation and venue hire expenses that can be packaged above the standard cap ($2,649 on top of your capped expenses).
Approved Entertainment Benefits include:
· Café and Restaurant
· Pub / Club Meals
· Weddings
· Engagements
· Anniversaries
· Accommodation
· Function Rooms
· Holiday Packages
· Cruise Ship Cabins Fare
· More
Using my salary packaging card on holiday
If you haven’t guessed already, there are a wide range holiday-related expenses that you can pay for with your salary packaging card – food, accommodation, cruise ship cabin fairs, holiday packages and more. But using your salary packaging card on holiday has other benefits.
Your salary packaging card can help you budget for your trip. Allocating specific costs to your salary packaging funds allows you to track your spending and manage your everyday activities.
Maybe you would like to use your salary packaging card to pay for the fancy dinners. If you’re going on a road trip, you might nominate the cost of petrol as your preferred expense. The point is your salary packaging card will help you stick to an effective budget so that you can do more of the things you love.
Afterwards, you can review your account by accessing the My Eziway Account App. Here you will see a full transaction history, which means you can track your spending.
Another significant benefit of using your card on holiday is it allows you to dispose of your excess salary packaging funds before the end of the Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) year (31st March). Why is this important? An excess of salary packaging money will be rolled over and deducted from next year’s annual cap. If you have accumulated a large sum of pre-tax funds over the course of the year, holiday expenses are the perfect way to lower that number and ready yourself for the new FBT year.
Limitations
Below we have listed the limitations of use for a salary packaging card
· Cash withdrawals cannot be made from the card
· Funds on the card cannot be transferred to other cards or bank accounts
· BPAY payments are not supported
· Recurring payments (Direct Debits) are not supported
· The card can only be used for Entertainment Benefits and Living Expenses
With summer on the way, it’s a good time to consider how you can use your salary packaging card on holiday to ensure you get the most out of your money. If you’d like to get started or find out more, contact us here or call 1800 932 394. Alternatively, more information can be found on our Help Centre.