Workers Compensation Insurance, is your business complying with their obligations?

As seen in Woopi News October 2024

“From the 1st October 2024 the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) will be conducting a review of all businesses in NSW who may need a workers compensation policy.  Any business identified as not having a current workers compensation policy could be liable to pay double the amount of policy premium for the last five years”  

If your business is paying wages to employees, you are required to have a workers compensation policy in place. The only exception is where all employees are directors, and the annual wages are less than $7500.  In some circumstances, the policy should also cover subcontractors who are deemed employees, although most subcontractors who are deemed employees should have by now been reengaged as an employee on payroll under the new contractor rules that commenced December 2023.

If you don’t have a workers compensation policy covering your employees, you need to act now.  Some industries have specialist insurers but most commonly workers compensation insurance is through iCare.

If you do have a worker’s compensation policy, you need to ensure that you are lodging your annual declaration of wages and updating your estimated wages for the following financial year.  Where business owners commonly make mistakes with the declaration is not understanding all the payments that are included in total wages ie declaring the total gross wages amount and forgetting that the reportable amount also includes superannuation accrued for that period regardless of if its paid to the fund or not. Often business owners just declare the wages paid to employees and forget to also declare separately the amounts paid to apprentices.  There is a premium discount when employing apprentices so its worth taking the extra steps to complete this information.

For more information a full list of what should be included in the wages declaration can be found on the iCare website.