Gross Amount (New Definition)

(from the ATO's Business Implementation Guide)

Gross Amount is a construct of many different types of payments in payroll. There are a number of changes to the STP Phase 2 data structure that make this component of pay difficult to concisely define. Therefore, this actual element of data (PAYEVNTEMP258 Gross Amount) definition is in two parts:

• The total of reportable income
• Less the separately itemised components that are now discretely reported.
  
  

Gross Amount is the residual amount that remains.

• Reportable Income – the financial value of the total remuneration, prior to the deduction of any approved Salary Sacrifice arrangements, PAYGW or foreign tax, paid to a Payee for providing work or services to a business entity or as a consequence of employment, except for any amounts that are expressly excluded by the Commissioner of Taxation
  
  
• Less Separately Itemised Components – of the reportable income defined above, some components have been itemised separately for either IITR deduction purposes or for Services Australia to identify the income as defined under the legislation within their jurisdiction for the purposes of administering their social services programmes.
  
  

This complex definition allows Gross Amount to be common across all Income Types, thus accounting for the different components that may be included in the Business Personal Services Income Types (voluntary agreement, labour-hire and other specified income) in addition to that of Salary and Wages and others.

Services Australia categorise this as Employment Income or Lump Sum, depending on the payment frequency.

For example; if a Payee:

• Was on an annual wage of $51,776 for 38 ordinary hours/week
• Had an approved Salary Sacrifice arrangement to superannuation of $5,000
• Took 4 weeks of annual leave
• One week of leave without pay
• Received a cents/km allowance of $0.78 for 2,150 business kilometres travelled
• A laundry allowance of $3.55 per week to launder the uniform
• Performed 82 hours of overtime at time and a half on 41 separate occasions
• Received a meal allowance for each overtime period of $15.94
• Performed 3 weeks of higher duties at $150/wk.

Then the reportable income and components would be as follows:

The business rules for Gross are:

1. A Payer reports the YTD amounts for Gross Amount for each Payee included in that STP Report.
   
   
1. These YTD amounts may be less than a previous report (for example; recovery of a current year overpayment or reclassification of the Payment Type).
   
   
2. These YTD amounts may be negative, however, ATO-derived aggregated gross must be zero or a positive amount.
   
   
2. As a component of disaggregated gross, the YTD amount reported must be the pre-sacrificed amount.