The Australian Taxation Office recognises workplace giving as
“a simple and effective way for employees to regularly donate to charities or organisations that are entitled to receive tax deductible donations. It is another way for employees to support charities. To participate in a workplace giving program, the charity or organisation, such as a library or university, must have deductible gift recipient (DGR) status.
Workplace giving is optional. Both the employee and the employer must agree to participate.
As an employer, you must ensure the participating charities or organisations have DGR status.”
Humanitas as a charitable organisation holds Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) Status.
The following information is from the Australian Taxation Office on Workplace Giving.
Benefits of a workplace giving program
Workplace giving programs provide benefits for the community.
For charitable organisations, workplace giving provides long term, stable funding for core programs. This funding has little or no administrative cost – there are no receipts to issue and no costs associated with targeted communications to attract donors.
For employees, workplace giving is affordable, through a transparent and trustworthy program, with no costly fundraising activities. Employees can make donations in an efficient and tax-effective manner, eliminating the need to collect receipts or wait until the end of the year to claim a tax refund.
For employers, workplace giving can provide a low cost, administratively simple way of creating community/business partnerships and building employee morale, by mobilising significant funding and volunteer involvement.
How workplace giving works
As an employer, if you wish to offer workplace giving, you can invite your employees to enter into a workplace giving program. Your employees will nominate their preferred charity from a selection you provide and then specify the amount they wish to donate. Generally, the donation amount is a fixed amount deducted from their salary or wages on each pay day. You then pay the donation directly to the charity.
The workplace giving program does not affect the way your employees’ gross income, super guarantee payments or fringe benefits are worked out.
How to run a workplace giving program
When you decide to start a workplace giving program with Humanitas, follow the steps below to ensure you meet your obligations as an employer.
- Charity- Humanitas.
- Obtain account deposit details from Humanitas so you can make lump sum deposits. Details are as follows:
Commonwealth Bank BSB 067000 A/C 1067 7158
- Decide whether or not you are going to specify a minimum donation amount per pay per participating employee.
- Decide whether or not you will reduce the amount of tax you withhold from the salaries of your participating employees to account for the amount donated each pay (see ). In some circumstances, small donation amounts will result in no or minimal change to the amount of tax to be withheld.
- Find out which of your employees would like to participate, how much they are willing to donate.
- Deduct the agreed donation amount from the income you pay to each participating employee and forward it to Humanitas as a lump sum. We recommend you keep a receipt for your records.
- Keep records of the amount donated on behalf of each employee.
- At the end of the financial year, advise each participating employee in writing of the amount they have donated (refer to the Australian Taxation Website for more information).
Information for Individual Donors
Payroll Donations through a Workplace Giving program is a very effective way for individual donors being able to make a regular weekly donation to Humanitas.
The nominated amounts you choose to donate are deducted from your pay each week, and are fully tax deductible at the end of each financial year.
Your privacy is fully respected at all times and you will not be contacted outside of your employment.
You have the opportunity to stop your payroll deduction or change your donation from time to time as you choose.
It does not cost you anything to become a member of the Workplace Giving, Payroll Deduction program. You can commence by pledging to give as little as $2.00 per week.
Supplementary Information
Australian Taxation Information Fact Sheet