How your business can save on its car parking spaces during COVID-19

To help businesses navigate this difficult time, here are our top tips for reducing car parking costs during the coronavirus pandemic. 

1. Pay less Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) 

Did you know that your business could be paying less FBT on employee car parking at the moment? If your staff car parking is not meeting all the ATO’s conditions, it could be exempt or receive a reduction from FBT – for example, if car parking is provided for less than 4 hours between 7am and 7pm. 

If your company has staff working from home, and employee parking is going unused, it is worth investigating whether that parking is currently exempt from FBT. DIVVY Enterprise clients can determine exact car parking usage in an instant with DIVVY’s reports portal and potentially save thousands during this time. 

2. Get an exemption on the Parking Space Levy 

Sydney, Melbourne and Perth all have versions of the parking space levy (known in Victoria as the congestion levy), an annual tax payable by owners of parking spaces located in specific high-density districts. 

As part of the NSW Government’s tax relief measures to assist businesses impacted by COVID-19, Revenue NSW have announced that PSL payments will be deferred until 30 September 2020. At the time of writing, the Victorian and Western Australian governments are yet to make similar announcements. 

Now is a good time to investigate whether your parking spaces are eligible for exemption from the parking space levy. In NSW an unused casual car parking space – that is, a car space available for public parking – is excluded from the PSL calculation. 

If your business has car spaces listed for public parking on DIVVY Marketplace that are not being used to their full capacity at the moment, investigate whether you are eligible to reduce your PSL payment. The DIVVY reports portal can provide the usage records required to apply for an exemption. 

If you’re a building tenant with car parking on your lease, there’s a good chance your landlord is benefiting from the PSL deferral. Consider asking them to pass the current deferrals and savings on to you too.  

3. Make money from your empty car parking spaces 

You could be generating revenue from parking spaces left empty by staff working from home. If you have DIVVY access controllers installed in your car park, consider listing your empty car parking spaces for public bookings on DIVVY Marketplace. There are still people commuting to work who need safe and secure parking, and every Marketplace booking returns revenue to your business. 

If your car park has a ticket validator or valet service entry system, your vacant parking spaces can be listed for public booking on our parking aggregator site Justbooked. List parking spaces for free and take advantage of a new marketing channel. 

4. Get efficient with DIVVY Enterprise 

The DIVVY Enterprise parking management system helps businesses get the most out of their parking at any time, and it can make life that bit simpler and safer during COVID-19.   

DIVVY Enterprise uses contactless QR code technology to provide access to car parks, doing away with the unsafe practice of sharing physical access cards. 

The ‘Free Up My Space’ feature offers the ultimate flexibility for staff parking management, even more, useful in rapidly evolving situations like the coronavirus pandemic. Employees with allocated parking who are working from home can make their parking space available for those staff that need to continue to travel into the office and who don’t normally have access to parking. 

The ‘Book On Behalf’ feature makes it easy to enable access to parking for employees or others visitors who don’t usually park on-site, or who usually work from another site, but need access during COVID-19. 

DIVVY Enterprise uses secure cloud-based technology so all these features, plus Enterprise’s multitude of other functions, can all be performed remotely, meaning staff working from home can continue to manage and monitor parking efficiently and with ease. 

*Please note DIVVY does not provide financial advice and we recommend you seek advice from your financial advisory or accountant.* 

We’re here to help. For more information, please contact Kat Fowler, DIVVY’s Marketing and Communications Manager at kat@divvy.com.au.