Income Tax Assessment Act 1997

A genuine redundancy payment is so much of a payment received by an employee who is dismissed from employment because the employee’s position is genuinely redundant as exceeds the amount that could reasonably be expected to be received by the employee in consequence of the voluntary termination of his or her employment at the time of the dismissal.

A genuine redundancy payment must satisfy the following conditions:

the employee is dismissed before the earlier of the following:

the day the employee reached *pension age;

if the employee’s employment would have terminated when he or she reached a particular age or completed a particular period of service—the day he or she would reach the age or complete the period of service (as the case may be);

if the dismissal was not at *arm’s length—the payment does not exceed the amount that could reasonably be expected to be made if the dismissal were at arm’s length;

at the time of the dismissal, there was no *arrangement between the employee and the employer, or between the employer and another person, to employ the employee after the dismissal.

However, a genuine redundancy payment does not include any part of a payment that was received by the employee in lieu of *superannuation benefits to which the employee may have become entitled at the time the payment was received or at a later time.

A payment is not a genuine redundancy payment if it is a payment mentioned in section 82‑135 (apart from paragraph 82‑135(e)).

Paragraph 82‑135(e) provides that the part of a genuine redundancy payment or an early retirement scheme payment worked out under section 83‑170 is not an employment termination payment.