Medical Practice Payroll Tax — Queensland

What this means for your practice

If your practice engages GPs (or GP registrars) under a Service Facility Agreement where the practice collects billings and remits the balance, those payments are not deemed wages. You do not need to calculate a deemed wage figure for the GP cohort. Employed staff wages (nurses, receptionists, practice managers) remain taxable and are tested against the $1,300,000 threshold as normal. Non-GP specialists and allied health practitioners are not covered by this exemption — their payments under relevant contracts remain fully taxable.

Payroll tax threshold context

Queensland threshold: $1,300,000 (FY 2026/2027). Deemed wages plus employed staff wages are tested against this threshold.

How Queensland treats a practice's deemed wages

Queensland starts the same way as the other relevant-contract jurisdictions: a practice that invoices and remits has deemed wages equal to the amount remitted. What sets Queensland apart is the next step — payments to general practitioners and GP registrars are stripped out of that figure completely.

Everything paid to anyone else stays in. A general practice's taxable amount is therefore its employed staff wages; a mixed practice's is staff wages plus the non-GP remittances.

Why Queensland's exemption has no condition

There is nothing for a Queensland practice to satisfy: no bulk-billing percentage, no proportional formula, no disclosure attached to the GP cohort. The sole question is whether the practitioner is a general practitioner or a GP registrar.

That puts the Service Facility Agreements at the centre of the file, because they establish who is a GP. The exemption follows from the practitioner's status, not from anything the practice does with its billing.

The limits of the Queensland exemption

General practitioners and GP registrars are covered; nobody else is. Hospitals, non-GP medical specialists and allied health practitioners sit outside the exemption and their contract payments are fully taxable.

For a mixed practice that means the GP cohort can carry no liability while the non-GP cohort alone climbs past the shrinking $1,300,000 deduction.

The Queensland practice's documentary position

Three records carry a Queensland position: the Service Facility Agreements naming each GP and GP registrar, payroll records that keep GP and non-GP payments apart, and the group structure identifying the Designated Group Employer.

Because the exemption is worked inside the return rather than by not lodging, the practice should be able to demonstrate how the GP cohort was excluded, not simply assert that it was.

Queensland's real exposure sits outside general practice

A general practice is the safest position in the country. The risk sits with practices whose clinical team is not purely GP: a specialist or allied health practice in Queensland enjoys no relief and meets the full 4.75% rate above the deduction.

A mixed practice is exposed to the extent its non-GP cohort exceeds the deduction, and to the extent its records cannot separate the two groups.

Recurring mistakes in Queensland

The mistake that recurs is applying the exemption to the whole clinical team rather than to the GP cohort. One service-fee line covering GPs and non-GPs makes a correct application impossible.

A second is assuming that an exempt GP cohort means there is nothing to file. Registration and lodgement still apply, and the exemption is applied within the return.

How a Queensland practice proves who is a GP

The Queensland exemption turns entirely on the practitioner's status, so the practice's first task is to establish who is a general practitioner or a GP registrar. The Service Facility Agreements are the primary evidence, but they are not the only thing the Queensland Revenue Office will look at: a practitioner's registration and the way the practice presents them also matter.

Because the exemption follows the person rather than the billing, a practice should record each practitioner's type against their payments. A remittance ledger organised by individual, with the practitioner type stated, does that; a single 'doctor payments' line does not, and it leaves the practice unable to demonstrate which payments the exemption covers.

A Queensland practice that also engages non-GP practitioners

A practice that engages both GPs and non-GP clinicians carries two different rules at once. The GP cohort's payments drop out of the deemed wages figure entirely; the non-GP cohort's payments stay in and are tested against the shrinking $1,300,000 deduction. The exemption does not reach the practice as a whole, only the GP part of it.

That makes the payroll split the whole exercise. Where a specialist or an allied health practitioner is engaged on the same terms as the GPs, the practice should still report their payments separately, because only the GP payments are exempt. A mixed practice that merges the cohorts will overstate its exemption and, on review, be corrected.

How the Queensland exemption sits with employed staff wages

The Queensland exemption touches wages paid to GPs and GP registrars; it does not touch the wages of the practice's other employees. Nurses, receptionists and practice managers remain taxable wages, and they are tested against the $1,300,000 deduction in the ordinary way. A general practice can be fully exempt on its GP cohort and still owe tax on its staff.

A practice should therefore model the two groups separately. The GP cohort drops out; the staff cohort does not. Where the staff wages alone exceed the deduction, the practice has a liability whatever its GP position, and the exemption should not be allowed to obscure it.

A worked Queensland medical scenario

Take a Queensland practice with $400,000 of employed staff wages and $1,500,000 remitted to non-GP medical specialists. The GP exemption does not reach specialists, so the whole $1,900,000 is taxable. Queensland's $1,300,000 deduction leaves $600,000 taxed at 4.75% — $28,500.

Now replace the specialists with general practitioners on the same $1,500,000. The GP cohort is exempt, so only the $400,000 of staff wages is tested — below the $1,300,000 deduction, and the liability falls to nil. The same billing, the same amounts and the same practice produce a $28,500 difference purely on the practitioner type.