Editorial: Treasurer must act on GP fees

A GP fee hike, an end to bulk-billing and a spike in patients turning up at emergency departments are all on the cards if Treasurer Cameron Dick doesn’t act swiftly to protect doctors, and patients, from crippling payroll taxes.

Treasurer Cameron Dick returns to work this week with general practitioners having found themselves on the growing list of professions hit with new or increased state taxes.

Mr Dick’s budget is consequently looking in very good shape.

But his reputation as a trustworthy steward of the state’s economy is challenged, having already picked the pocket of miners, landlords and bookmakers with limited consultation – and with the government now also showing zero signs it will intervene in what doctors are claiming is a new payroll tax interpretation that will kill bulk-billing and lead directly to fee hikes.

The crisis was sparked by a NSW decision that the Queensland Revenue Office says will apply here.

That new, backdated, interpretation of existing tax laws means that GPs who rent their rooms at clinics – the majority – will now be treated not as contractors but as employees for the purposes of payroll tax.

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick must act to protect Queenslanders from increased GP fees.

That means that the money paid to doctors who have a service agreement with a practice essentially as a tenant will be included in the clinic manager’s payroll tax bill.

Most clinic owners fear they will now be liable, if audited, for tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid payroll tax from this financial year – and hundreds of thousands each year from now.

And just as Treasurer Dick’s ill-fated tax on landlords was actually a tax on renters (as any additional tax take on property owners in a tough housing market will of course be passed on in the next lease) so it is with the GP payroll issue; it will be patients who will be the ones paying.

The Royal Australian College of GPs says the state’s Commissioner of State Revenue “reassured us that there is no intention for any changes to current interpretations of the law” – but they still expect some practices to face audits, and so that means all clinics will have to budget assuming they will be hit with this new bill.

Before he went on leave, Mr Dick said “there’s been no change to the regime for payroll tax relating to contractors since 2008”.

But over summer there has been a chorus from clinic managers who say their legal advice is clear and so increasing their fees is unavoidable.

They warn the impact could be a fee hike of 15 per cent and the end to bulk-billing – leading to more patients turning up at state-funded hospital emergency departments.

The solution, they say, is simple: that the government moves to offer an exemption from payroll tax for all those GPs who rather than being an employee of a practice instead pay a service fee to use a room and have access to clinic staff.

But the government appears unmoved – with those ministers quizzed while the Treasurer has been on leave parroting the lines that payroll tax exemptions only ever increase the tax burden on other Queenslanders, and that “unlike other states, Queensland’s revenue office does not specifically target GP clinics for payroll tax compliance”.

Unsurprisingly, the Palaszczuk government also wants federally funded Medicare rebates to be increased.

Unlike Mr Dick’s other missteps over the past year, this one is not his fault. But he will be the one who will have to fix this – because regardless of how many clinics are audited, it seems fees are going to increase.

The health of Queenslanders must always be a government’s first consideration. If GP fees are going up then the Treasurer must act. Blaming Canberra is not a political strategy that will work this time.