1 Policy Statement

All employees at the University of Southern Queensland are eligible to sacrifice a cash component of their gross salary as determined by relevant industrial instruments in order to ‘package' remuneration benefits.

(Approved by Council November 2000)

2 Procedures

2.1 Decision to package or to stop packaging

The decision to enter into the salary packaging arrangements will be a personal decision for the employee. The University strongly advises that the employee should consult a licensed financial adviser before making the decision and must sign a declaration to this effect prior to the commencement of such arrangements. The cost of this professional advice will be the responsibility of the employee.  The University will accept no liability whatsoever in respect of any salary packaging arrangement undertaken by an employee.

An employee may apply to salary package an element of their gross salary by completing and signing a Salary Packaging Authority Form.

An employee may cease salary packaging an element of their gross salary by completing and signing a Salary Packaging Cancellation Form.  An employee must give the University one month's notice of their decision to cease salary packaging.

2.2 Administration

The Salary Packaging Authority Form and the Salary Packaging Cancellation Form can be obtained from the Superannuation website.

Salary packaging will be administered by Human Resources. 

The University will administer salary packaging of superannuation at no cost to the employee.  However, if the University contracts the administration of additional salary packaging elements to an external provider, an administration fee may be charged. 

2.3 Salary packaging element - superannuation

Salary packaging of superannuation contributions is only permitted to schemes which are approved by the University.  Those schemes are:

• UniSuper Defined Benefit/Accumulation(2) Plan (formerly known as SSAU)

• UniSuper Accumulation(1) Plan (formerly known as TESS)

• QSuper (Defined Benefit Plan)

• QSuper (Accumulation Scheme) (formerly known as Gosuper)

Subject to the employee's superannuation fund's rules, the employee may salary package to replace any required ‘member contribution' to his/her superannuation scheme, plus an amount necessary to cover the taxation on the contribution.  Before tax voluntary contributions may also be made in addition to the compulsory member contributions.

Substitution of a salary packaged contribution to replace the employee's required after-tax member contribution will not affect the amount of the superannuation benefit (ie. the employee's final payout at retirement) that the employee will receive from his/her plan.

Where benefits are derived as a multiple of average superannuable salary (such as in UniSuper or QSuper (Defined Benefit Plan)), the employee's superannuable salary (ie. his/her actual gross salary prior to any entry into salary packaging) will remain the salary that the employee will have received from his/her salary classification had he/she not entered into salary packaging.

The University's employer contributions to the employee's superannuation will remain unaltered unless the contribution rates are varied by the fund's Trust Deeds. The contributions will reference the classification rate for the employee's position in the same manner as it would if he/she were not salary packaging.

Prior to commencing a salary packaging arrangement involving superannuation, the University strongly advises that the employee seeks independent financial advice to ensure that the arrangement will be tax effective for him/her and must sign a declaration to this effect prior to the commencement of such arrangement.  This should be obtained from a licensed financial advisor.  The cost of obtaining this professional advice will be the responsibility of the employee.

The types of employee contributions that may be packaged and potential taxation issues are available from the Salary Packaging web site.

2.4 Other salary packaging elements

All employees will be eligible to sacrifice a cash component of their gross salary in order to ‘package' other remuneration benefits nominated from a range approved by the University.  Such packaging arrangements may be provided by an external salary packaging provider as determined by the University from time to time.  Any costs incurred in such salary packaging arrangements will be the employee's responsibility.

Changing and terminating salary packaging arrangements will be in accordance with the terms and conditions of the salary packaging provider.

3 Other Policy Information