Fringe benefits tax exempt benefits

20.7 Remote area exemptions

Remote area housing

Legislative reference: section 58ZC of the FBTAA.

A remote area housing benefit is an exempt benefit. Remote area housing benefits are explained in section 10.8 of Housing fringe benefits.

Certain meals provided to primary production employees

Legislative reference: section 58ZD of the FBTAA.

Expense payment, property, board or residual benefits arising in respect of the provision of meals on a working day are exempt benefits if the following conditions are satisfied:

• you are carrying on a business of primary production for the purposes of the ITAA 1997
• your business is carried on in a remote area (as explained in section 10.8 of Housing fringe benefits), that is the location of the employee's primary place of employment
• the meal is provided to the employee (except where the benefit is a board benefit, in which case it may also be provided to an associate of the employee)
• the provision of the meal doesn't amount to the provision of a meal entertainment benefit (as explained in section 14.3 of Fringe benefits tax and entertainment).

A business of primary production is:

• cultivating or propagating plants, fungi or their products or parts (including seeds, spores, bulbs and similar things) in any physical environment
• maintaining animals for the purpose of selling them or their bodily produce (including natural increase)
• manufacturing dairy produce from raw material that you produce
• conducting operations relating directly to taking or catching fish, turtles, dugong, bêche-de-mer, crustaceans or aquatic molluscs
• conducting operations relating directly to taking or culturing pearls or pearl shell
• planting or tending trees in a plantation or forest that are intended to be felled
• felling trees in a plantation or forest
• transporting trees, or parts of trees, that you felled in a plantation or forest to either the place
• where they are first to be milled or processed
• from which they are to be transported to the place where they are first to be milled or processed.

There is no requirement for the benefit to be provided on the business premises of the employer for this exemption to apply.