Originally Posted by
Jetsbest
Why is that relevant? The allowance rates paid are dependent on:
a. the places one is put by the company,
b. the time spent in these places, and
c. determined by the Australian Public Service rates for those places,
d. as
agreed by Qantas in the Enterprise Agreements.
Allowances are
not income; they are intended to cover the reasonable, and independently assessed, costs of staying in those places. (but, granted, if a person chooses to stay in their room & live on cup-noodles they’ll have funds left over.
) If crew don’t travel they don’t get allowances. Allowances are a business cost of having crew serving your company’s customers around the world.
I disagree that allowances should be considered part of an employee’s income.
your major problem is that, although what you assert used to be the way allowances were considered, modern generations of pilots and cabin crew use meal allowances to inflate their income when applying for loans. Nowadays, the ATO, banks, employers consider meal allowances to be income. All that is different is that there is a certain amount that the ATO considers to be tax free.
the horse has bolted. A long time ago on this issue.