FAQs - Personal benefits
FAQs for personal benefits
A Novated Lease can be a flexible and convenient way to finance and run your car. It's an arrangement between you, your employer and us which allows you to package the finance and running costs associated with your car, directly from your salary. This allows you to save on GST and income tax.
Why choose a Novated Lease?
A Novated Lease is flexible, convenient and offers you great benefits:
- There’s no GST to pay on the new car purchase price, a saving of up to $6,191 from 1 July 2023 onwards (subject to the car threshold).
- You’ll save between 10 – 15% on running costs such as scheduled servicing and maintenance, tyres, and repairs, when you use our negotiated rates via our preferred partner network.
- You have the freedom to choose the make, model, colour and accessories for your new car.
- You can even lease a used car or your current car, if the car is less than 12 years old and has travelled less than 150,000km (at the start of the lease).
- You can choose the lease term, from 1 to 5 years, depending on what’s right for you and your budget.
- Depending on how much you drive, we’ll assist you to set a budget for running costs such as comprehensive insurance, registration, servicing, and maintenance.
- With a budget for running costs, you’re much less likely to incur a large unexpected bill, as running costs are collected in smaller increments each payday, making personal and family budgeted much easier.
- Your car finance and budgeted running costs are deducted from your salary as one easy payment on payday. Using these funds, we pay your car finance and
- running costs for your, so you’re not out of pocket.
- There’s no minimum number of kilometres you need to drive each year.
- Your car can be entirely for personal use (you don’t need a portion of business use).
- You don’t need to keep logbooks and Novated Leasing doesn’t make tax-time a hassle.
A Novated Lease bundles your car finance with budgeted running costs. Budgeted running costs include:
- Annual registration
- Scheduled servicing
- Maintenance
- Comprehensive insurance
- Fuel (for petrol and diesel engine vehicles)
- Replacement tyres
- Oils, lubricants and car washes (where the car wash is owned and operated by the petrol station)
- 24/7 roadside assistance and accident management
The choice is yours!
You choose the make and model, colour and accessories you want and that suits your lifestyle and budget.
You can get a Novated Lease on a:
- New car - access our buying power or negotiate with your own deal
- Used car (max. 12-years old and travelled less than 150,000km at the start of lease)
- Car you already own (via a Sale & Leaseback – max. 12-years old and travelled less than 150,000km at the start of lease)
And a ‘car’ is considered to be:
- A passenger (e.g. sedan; SUV) or goods (e.g. ute) vehicle less than 1 tonne including accessories (e.g. tow bar; bull-bar), that carries fewer than nine passengers and with a carrying capacity less than 1 tonne.
FleetPartners will calculate the running cost budgets on your chosen vehicle based on how many kilometres you expect to travel each year. If your circumstances change and you find you are driving more or less than expected, we can revise your budget to reflect your current use.
At the end of your lease, we reconcile your Novated Lease and return any unspent budget to your employer, who will process it back to you via your payroll department.
FleetPartners do it all for you! Fuel cards are issued for your convenience; servicing, maintenance and tyres are organised and paid directly to the supplier.
If you have opted for FleetPartners to arrange your comprehensive insurance, you can be assured that your cover is in place from when you drive away. If you choose to source your own comprehensive insurance, you can simply pay your insurer and claim the cost back as a reimbursement.
We can pay registration renewals directly or again, you can pay it yourself and claim the cost back through the package.
We want to make things as easy as possible for you. A Novated Lease can be a paperless transaction once the package begins, and you have the ability to review and adjust your budget at any time.
Yes.
While a leased car must be covered with comprehensive insurance for the life of the lease, you can source your own insurance if that is what you choose to do. You will need to pay the annual insurance premium in full and provide us with a copy of the Certificate of Currency. You can then claim back the cost of the insurance. To do this, you can download the claim reimbursement form from the FleetPartners website and email it to us.
Alternatively, FleetPartners provides a competitive fleet insurance policy through our Allianz Comprehensive Motor Vehicle Policy. Before making a decision in relation to comprehensive motor insurance, please read the Product Disclosure Statement, Distributor Statement and Target Market Determination and consider whether this insurance product is right for you. FleetPartners is an Authorised Distributor of the comprehensive motor vehicle issuer Allianz Australia Insurance Limited (ABN 15 000 122 850 AFSL 23408).
FleetPartners may receive financial benefits in connection with its products and services.
Yes.
There are no restrictions on using your car for personal use. In fact, you can use your car for 100% personal use - there's no requirement for any business use.
Yes.
The number of leases you have is only limited by affordability and your successful application for credit.
Yes.
You can lease a car for a family member or partner.
Please note that the lease (and associated financial liability) will be in your name and the vehicle registered to you.
There are a number of options to consider if you change jobs during your lease term. You can:
- transfer your Novated Lease to your new employer, if your employer offers novated leasing;
- continue to make your monthly lease payments under the existing finance agreement (less any previously included running costs)
- make an offer to purchase the vehicle and payout the lease (including residual value amount).
If you go on unpaid leave for any reason (including maternity leave), you will need to continue paying the finance rental and running costs yourself. Once you return to paid work, your Novated Lease deductions can recommence by your employer from your pay and you can again access the tax savings.
FleetPartners will contact you before your lease is due to end and walk you through options. In summary, these options are:
- keep your car by paying the residual value amount and taking full ownership of the vehicle;
- Refinance the residual for an additional lease term and continue to get the tax savings on running costs;
- upgrade to a new vehicle with a new lease.
We'll step you through your options and make it easy! Learn more about what happens at the end of a Novated Lease here.
Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) was introduced as a way of taxing non-cash benefits which are received in place of cash wages. If your employer assists in the provision of an owned or leased car, this would be considered a fringe benefit.
Without FBT, employers could provide non-cash benefits to their employees free of tax. So, the ATO has made employers responsible for administering fringe benefits and for paying any FBT liability.
When setting up your lease, we take care of this and work with your employer to minimise or even offset the FBT liability.
For tax purposes, a Novated Lease is considered (by the ATO) to be a benefit provided by your employer to you and is deemed a ‘fringe benefit’.
However, the Federal Government recently introduced a change (the Treasury Laws Amendment also known as the Electric Car Discount Act 2022) which applies to the leasing of certain zero or low-carbon emission cars including, battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and plug-in hybrids. This change means that these types of cars, first held and used on or after 1 July 2022, are now FBT-exempt, when the vehicle has a value below the Luxury Car Tax (LCT) threshold of $89,332.
Zero or low-carbon emission cars include:
- Battery electric cars
- Hydrogen fuel cell electric cars
- Plug-in hybrid electric cars (only exempt until 1 April 2025)
For cars where the Electric Car Discount Act does not apply, your employer can offset your FBT liability by making post-tax contributions from your salary towards running costs, equivalent to the FBT taxable value.
This is called the Employee Contribution Method (ECM) and means an amount will be set up and deducted from your salary to offset any FBT liability.
Yes.
The current LCT threshold is $89,332 for zero or low-emission cars, and $76,950 for combustion engine cars.
Cars with a GST-inclusive retail value above the applicable LCT threshold will be subject to LCT. This is payable on the GST-exclusive value of the amount above the threshold. This amount is calculated by the supplying dealer and included in the car purchase price.
We work with the employer's Payroll team to make this a seamless experience for you.
Lease deductions are made on your behalf to us each pay cycle, and the remainder of your (net) salary is paid directly to you.
Over the life of the lease, you may accrue surplus funds in your Novated Leasing account. This could be because your driving patterns have changed (e.g. we budgeted for 2 sets of tyres over the life of your lease, but you’re not driving as much as you had originally anticipated, so you only need 1 set of tyres).
At any time during your lease, we can assist you to adjust your deductions to match your driving patterns.
Or, at the end of your Novated Lease, we’ll return excess funds to Payroll. They will apply any necessary income tax and return these funds to you as salary.
Having an accident can be a unnerving event. But, with FleetPartners, just one phone call will take care of everything. From advising the driver on the scene and handling all the necessary insurance documentation and claim, to the repair process, and handing the keys back to you. We even liaise with your insurer to arrange the repair estimates, as well as manage the repair agent to ensure the time your vehicle is off the road is kept to a minimum and that repairs are of a quality standard.
You can choose to have national roadside assistance included in your lease, giving you support 24/7.
Simply call us for:
- a flat tyre
- a flat battery (jump start, battery test completed)
- a replacement battery (the battery will be charged to your running costs budget)
- a lockout (locksmith services will be charged to your running costs budget)
- fuel – if you run out, we’ll organise enough fuel to get you to the nearest petrol
- station or, organise a tow if fuel isn’t available
- charge for electric vehicles - we'll organise to send a mobile EV charger or tow you to the nearest EV charging station, whichever is fastest.
- a mechanical breakdown
- a tow – if your car needs towing, we’ll organise this
- windscreen repair or replacement
and we'll arrange for someone to come out to either repair your vehicle on the roadside or, tow it to a repairer.
If the vehicle has to stay at the repairer, we can arrange for you to carry on to your destination or return home.
We aim to make the experience hassle-free. Our website is also a great resource which includes an easy-to-use Novated Lease calculator. You can choose the make, model and variant of car you want and in a matter of seconds, it will estimate how much you’ll save, compared to purchasing the same vehicle with cash.
Check out the FleetPartners Novated Leasing calculator and if there’s a car you’d like to get a quote on, then make an enquiry, either via the form on the website or by calling us on 1300 666 001.
- We’ll then provide you with an obligation-free quote on the make, model and variant of car you’re looking to lease.
- If you are happy with the quote, we’ll guide you through the finance application process and easy setup.
- Upon approval of your finance, we will secure your car and place an order with our national dealer network at a competitive price.
- If you are leasing a used car, we’ll need you to provide the details of the car and the seller.
- Once your car order is placed, we work with the dealer to book a time for you to collect your vehicle.
Due to unprecedented market conditions, the time from order to delivery may vary depending on the make, model and variant you choose.