Fact Sheet

LAFHA Packaging Services

Are your employees living away from home?

The Living Away from Home Allowance (LAFHA) is paid to employees who live away from home to compensate for additional expenses or disadvantages that arise while working in a new location.

These employees could include the following:

• Australian residents moving to other locations within Australia
• Overseas long stay visa holders
• Australians working overseas

What are the benefits to your organisation?

LAFHA allowances mean your employees increase their take home pay by legitimately reducing tax.

For example, a salary earner of $100,000 with a spouse and one child can potentially be better off by $15,000 per annum.

This means that you can:

• Reduce financial stress of relocation for your employees
• Boost recruitment and retention
• Build staff loyalty
• Reduce some on-costs to your organisation such as workers’ compensation insurance premiums and payroll tax
• Transfer risk of error to 3rd party
• Free capacity within your organisation.

Getting the right advice

LAFHA is time consuming to administer, however Bates Cosgrave can offer the benefits to your employees, saving time and resources for your organisation.

LAFHA involves complex tax provisions and other compliance issues. We are licensed tax professionals and possess the necessary knowledge and expertise to remove any doubt on this poorly understood concession.

We offer premium services and can fully package our fees through employees’ salaries without triggering any Fringe Benefits Tax.

We can work with you to integrate the packaging calculations into your payroll system to enable streamlined reporting, depending on your requirements.

More information

Contact Bates Cosgrave on (02) 9957 4033 or email us to find out more about our services, and to discuss your specific requirements.

Download LAFHA Packaging Services (PDF 240kb)