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Mistral
Salary Packaging
was developed to service the growing marketplace for salary packaging solutions
for employees of various different Australian organisations. It is especially
useful for Public Benevolent Institutions (PBIs), public hospitals and
not-for-profit hospitals and their employees, who are recognized by the
Australian Tax Office as deserving of Fringe Benefits Tax exemptions due to the
difficult nature of their work, and the relatively poor compensation that they
enjoy. However, it is also useful for rebatable employers, which may take
advantage of the Fringe Benefits Tax reductions offered by the ATO, and
commercial organisations, all of whom may take advantage of exempt benefits and
salary packaged motor vehicles. A new category has been established for religious
practitioners, who may be permitted to sacrifice a percentage of their stipend to
a broad range of exempt benefits.
This web page gives an overview of
the Mistral
Salary Packaging system, its functional features, its
security features, and its flexible licensing features. A price list is also
included.
Visitors are welcome to browse the
system with a ‘guest’ login. This
gives full access to add, delete or update users, clients and payees, with
restrictions on the range of salaries available, and the understanding that all
changes are only effective for the one login session. Each screen has
comprehensive menu-driven help text which fully describes all of the functions
and calculations.
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Mistral
Salary Packaging maintains a database of users,
clients and payees for each licensed company. Payees may be optionally linked to
clients, allowing certain client values to default for each payee, and for payee
summary reporting for each client.
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Users, clients and payees may be
added, updated or deleted at any time by authorised users of each company’s
system. Any deletions are only performed after the user confirms that this is
what is really intended.
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Client data includes name and
address, default payment frequency (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or
annually), reimbursement frequency, and type of client. Mistral
Salary Packaging differentiates between Public
Benevolent Institutions, Public and
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Payee payment and reimbursement
frequencies default from the client’s payment and reimbursement frequencies, but
may be overridden for individual payees. Hence, there can be any combination of
different payment frequencies for payees of any one client. Additionally, payees
do not need to be linked to a client, allowing individual salary packaging for
payees.
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Payees may be stored (and ordered)
by Firstname Lastname, or by Lastname, Firstname depending on the client’s
preference. Data includes the contract salary, the hours worked per pay period
and the hourly rate. Only two of these are entered for each payee – the program
calculates the third figure.
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Payees may be salary packaged for
a portion of the FBT year, where benefits may be enjoyed at a higher rate than
for the whole of an FBT year. In this case, the annual limits of FBT caps are
still maintained. You may also impose a cap on the amount of allowable fringe
and exempt benefits as a percentage of the annual salary.
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Other payee data includes
information from an employee’s Withholding declaration, and any Medicare levy
declaration, required to calculate the correct withholding tax.
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Withholding tax is automatically
calculated by the Mistral
Salary Packaging program, using the latest available
tax rates and formulae, with the ability to vary all relevant parameters, such
as:
o
Has the Payee provided a Tax File
Number, or is the Payee exempt from needing a TFN?
o
Is the payee an Australian
Resident?
o
Has the Payee claimed the Tax Free
Threshold?
o
Amount the Payee has claimed for
Rebates and Family tax assistance?
o
Details of any Medicare levy
variation declaration.
o
Is the Payee entitled to Annual
Leave Loading?
o
Does the Payee have a HECS
accumulated debt?
o
Does the Payee have a SFSS
accumulated debt?
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A 'proposed' package may be copied to
a 'current' package at any time, allowing a basis for comparison between two salary
packaging scenarios. The proposed package may be compared to either the 'current'
package or an unpackaged scenario, allowing you to view savings in either relative
or absolute terms. Additionally, the details of the 'current' package may be viewed
at any time, including details of tax and motor vehicle calculations. Options are
available to enable entry of proposed benefits for each category, either
annually or by pay period.
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The Salary Package Proposal screen
allows variable entry of specific Fringe and Exempt Benefits appropriate for
each employer type, by Payee, either as an Annual or Periodic amount. The
Mistral
Salary Packaging program automatically calculates the
unentered Periodic or Annual value. Details of payment arrangements and account
numbers may also be entered for each proposed benefit. Links are available to
ATO information for each category of Fringe and Exempt benefit.
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A ‘calculate’ button is available at
any time to instantly calculate the effects of all entered benefits on the
salary package. It shows the tax saving and net benefit to the Payee, and a
comparative analysis between the current and proposed salary packages on the
SAME screen as the benefits are maintained. The screen also displays the gross
equivalent of the whole salary package. This benefits the Payee by calculating
an equivalent salary (without packaging) that would need to be earned for the
same cash position. This feature benefits the client organisation by showing a
competitive salary for the Payee’s job.
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An ‘optimise’ button is available to
select the optimum mix of Fringe Benefits that will yield the maximum value of
cash and fringe benefits less any deductions for employee contributions to the
package. This major feature of Mistral
Salary Packaging removes the need to ‘play with the
figures’, as it automatically calculates the best result for the given salary,
exempt benefits and motor vehicle package.
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The Tax Calculator is enabled to
calculate a Gross equivalent from an entered Net amount.
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Calculations also account for any
Superannuation Surcharge Tax, which may apply to higher salaries.
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A fully functional motor vehicle
calculator can calculate the taxable value of a vehicle using either or both of
the Statutory Method and Operating Cost Method. Optionally, the calculated value
may be loaded to the Fringe Benefit Proposal.
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A proposal form, which shows details
of all entered Fringe and Exempt Benefits, and some relevant calculated amounts,
can be produced from this same screen at the click of a button. The proposal is
designed as a proposal from the Payee to the Employer, for subsequent employer
approval.
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Each screen has context-sensitive
help, which fully explains the meanings of all data on the screen, and the
functions and inner workings of all buttons and calculators. The help screens
are indexed and framed for speed and ease of finding relevant information.
All of this is available in a
self-contained, web-based tool, allowing access from anywhere at any
time.
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Access to Mistral
Salary Packaging is
via a secure, encrypted company code, user code and password. Files containing
user data, client data and payee data are held separately for each company, and
can only be accessed by users who are authorised by the company, and by the
authors of the software for support purposes only.
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Each licensee has at least one
administrator login. The administrator controls access for all of the licensee’s
users, with control over password and access permissions.
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Payee data, which includes sensitive
information such as salaries, is fully encrypted and held in files which are
unintelligible even to the expert viewer.
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Files are maintained at the ISP
(Internet Service Provider) site, with full backup and recovery procedures and
control.
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Licenses are available for
‘individual’ users, ‘regular’ users, ‘extended’ users and ‘corporate’ users.
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An ‘individual’ license allows the
user to maintain a single payee. The user will have one opportunity to submit
the payee name and salary details, and then will be able to update the salary
package for a full month. If the user makes a genuine mistake with submitting
name and salary details, then he/she must contact us to rectify this error
before proceeding with the salary package.
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A ‘regular’ license allows up to 30
payees to be maintained. An ‘extended’ license allows up to 100 payees, whilst a
‘corporate’ license places no restrictions on the number of payees. All license
types (except for ‘Individual’) allow unlimited numbers of users and clients.
(‘Clients’ are grouping entities for employees, usually employer organisations,
for which summary reports are available.)
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Licenses may be purchased on a
monthly or annual renewable basis. Users are reminded each time they login if
their license is due to expire within 30 days.
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All files are maintained for a
minimum of three months after expiry of the license, allowing renewal within
this time. Also within this time frame, copies of a company’s data (in Excel’s
‘.csv’ format) may be requested for a nominal fee.
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A license holder is entitled to full
system support for the life of the license. The developers of the software
support it fully with up-to-date tax files and calculations, and monitoring of
ATO rulings and changes in practice which affect salary packaging. Any changes
to the system will be reported to licensees, either privately via email, or
publicly via text in the login screen. Suggestions and feedback are also welcome
from all license holders.
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License prices, inclusive of GST,
are:
|
License
Type |
Maximum
Payees |
One
Month |
One
Year |
|
Individual |
1 |
$55.00 |
N/A |
|
Regular |
30 |
$110.00 |
$660.00 |
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Extended |
100 |
$330.00 |
$1,980.00 |
|
Corporate |
Unlimited |
$440.00 |
$2,640.00 |
For further information on
Mistral
Salary Packaging or
to purchase a license via cheque or direct deposit, contact Management Online Pty Ltd via email to
info@SalPack.com.au. To purchase a license immediately via credit card, follow the link in the main page.
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