Six elections sit inside a car parking FBT calculation, and they are made in two independent steps. Getting the pairing right determines both the answer and how much data you have to produce.
Before any valuation, every one of these must be true on the day in question. If any fails, there is no car parking fringe benefit and nothing further to calculate.
Metered and voucher parking on a public street, road, lane, thoroughfare or footpath is excluded from the definition of a commercial parking station by statute. It cannot be the comparator that opens the gate, and it cannot set the value, no matter what it charges.
This is a frequent source of error in DIY surveys, because on-street bays are often the most visible paid parking near a site and the easiest to price.
Three methods. The election can change from year to year, but not part-way through a year.
The lowest all-day fee charged within 1 km, established separately for every individual day a benefit arose.
The mean of the lowest fee on the first and last days a benefit was provided. Two surveys, no data required from the employer.
An arm's-length valuation of the spaces themselves. Requires a suitably qualified valuer's written opinion.
The commercial parking station method demands a defensible rate for every single benefit day. In practice that means either a rate that provably did not change all year, or 228 separate determinations. Most employers cannot substantiate either.
The average cost method needs the rate on exactly two days. It is the only method that is both fully evidenced and practical to produce at a sensible fee — which is why it is what we sell.
An average cost figure cannot be used under the commercial parking station method. They are alternatives, not inputs to one another. Substituting one for the other is visible on the face of a workpaper.
A separate election from the valuation method, and frequently conflated with it. This one determines how much administrative work falls on the employer.
The year is treated as containing 228 benefit days. Nothing is required from the employer about actual usage.
A twelve-week record taken in a representative period, then valid for five years. Usually the largest single saving available to an employer.
Attendance and usage recorded for every day. Most accurate, most administratively expensive.
The statutory formula assumes a car park is used on 228 days. Real usage — allowing for leave, travel, remote work and part-time arrangements — is often materially lower.
Where an employer is prepared to keep a twelve-week register, the reduction in benefit days frequently outweighs anything achievable on the rate. We will tell you when we think that is your situation, even though it is not what we are selling.
The test is the shortest practicable route between the closest car entrance of the employer-provided car park and the closest car entrance of the commercial parking station. It is not a radius drawn on a map, and it is not measured centre point to centre point.
We apply TR 2021/2 para 17: from the closest car entrance of the work car park to the closest car entrance of the commercial parking station. The route may be travelled by foot, car, train or boat, and illegal or impractical shortcuts are excluded. We test more than one route wherever the result falls near the boundary, and include the maps in the evidence pack.
A straight-line radius fails in both directions. It captures stations that are further than a kilometre by any real route because a river, rail corridor or motorway sits between them, and it excludes stations that are genuinely within range because the pin was dropped on a building's postal address rather than its car park entrance.
This is why our order form asks you to identify the vehicle entrance, and why a dropped pin is more useful to us than a street number.
The car park in this example publishes a tariff topping out at $25 for seven hours or more, with an $8 early bird. Neither is the answer. The lowest all-day rate available to the public was an unpublished monthly permit — and it converts under s 39E.
Figures illustrative. Note that the daily rate fell between the two dates while the permit price rose — the business-day divisor moved further. A survey that reuses the opening rate at year end gets this wrong in the client's disfavour.
A survey built on published web tariffs returns $8.00 at best here. Applied across a 228-day statutory formula and a fleet of spaces, the gap between $8.00 and $4.55 is the entire value of commissioning the report.
Permit rates are not on any website. They come from asking the operator, in writing, and keeping the reply.
Before relying on a periodic rate we confirm it is genuinely available on a come-and-go basis, and that it is representative rather than a short-lived promotion.
Two surveys, the full evidence pack, and a defensible rate — within 24 hours.