2degrees has used TaxLab for its FBT returns for seven years, but gift cards were always the exception. Every quarter, the tax team went through the general ledger line by line, chased managers to find out who got each Prezzy Card, and tracked unissued cards from one quarter to the next. In this session from our Christmas gifting webinar, Kyrene Frisken explains how moving gifting to Extraordinary and connecting it to TaxLab changed that.

Speaker

• Kyrene Frisken, Tax Manager and Technical Accounting Lead, 2degrees

The gift card problem: Cards sat in drawers for months, changed hands between managers, and went to non-staff who had to be taken out of the return. “There was a lot of emails, Teams messages, chasing back and forth that was not value adding.”

How Extraordinary and TaxLab work together: The only setup requirement was loading employee IDs. Each quarter, 2degrees exports its Extraordinary transactions, uploads them to TaxLab, reconciles them to the ledger and files. “When it came to adoption or migration, it really couldn’t have been easier.”

The results:

• Gift card prep for each FBT return went from 3–5 days to a light check
• About 75% of gifted money is spent, with no FBT paid on the other 25%
• About 5% of gifted money has come back to the business so far
• Every transaction shows the employee ID, programme and date, giving a full audit trail

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FAQs

How does 2degrees handle FBT on employee gifts?
Gifting runs through Extraordinary, and the data uploads into TaxLab by employee ID. FBT is calculated on what employees actually spend.

How much time did 2degrees save?
Gift card prep for each FBT return dropped from three to five days to a light check.

What happens to unspent gift money at 2degrees?
It comes back to 2degrees when the gift expires, with no FBT paid on it. About 5% has been returned so far.

What was needed to connect Extraordinary to TaxLab?
Just loading employee ID numbers, so anonymised data uploads straight into TaxLab.