Using Meal Entertainment

If you are an employee of a public hospital, charitable, or medical research organisation, you’ve probably heard of meal entertainment. It’s all about being able to eat out at a café or restaurant and claim it from your pre-tax salary – meaning you save even more on tax! 

With many areas coming out of Covid related restrictions, Café’s and Restaurants are opening again, it’s only natural that many of us will want to get together with family and friends socially, outside of our own homes. By salary packaging these expenses, you can reduce your pre-tax salary by up to $2,649 and spend it tax free on eating out - each year.

Meal entertainment can be salary packaged over and above other salary packaging, and you have the freedom to choose whether you pay for these expenses up front and then claim them for reimbursement, or to take up a meal entertainment debit card and have regular salary deductions deposited against it. There are a few rules to keep in mind with meal entertainment, and I’ve highlighted the major points for you below:

• Sharing is caring – the meal needs to be for more than one person.
• Drive through no-no – drive through takeaway from fast food outlets are not eligible.  Should be eat in.
• Alcohol is ok – So long as it accompanies a meal in the claim. Alcohol purchases on their own are not eligible.
• Food and Drink – Is all that can be claimed. Remember, if you can’t eat it – you can’t claim it!

A complete list of the guidelines for this benefit can be found here. If you have questions on how meal entertainment works, please contact our Salary Packaging team at 1300 761 388.

So, make sure you are up to speed and get the most of your salary packaging and the benefits available to you with meal entertainment.