Big Money, Flashy Cars and FBT

This month's opinion piece is by Pat Chandra 

It seems that some employees are willing to foot the bill for FBT, if it means they can get that nice car they're after. Recently at a remunerations networking evening I listened in on this conversation between a couple of executives, talking about their sales reps: 

'As soon as you start thinking about them being away from home for more than a few days at a time, the money skyrockets' 

'We keep all our reps on the same base pay and a minimum of benefits - just their car, phone and laptop. Oh, and a per-diem [daily allowance] when they're away overnight. Anything more is entirely up to them - they make the sales, they get the commission' 

'Seems fine - but how do you know what to pay as a base? My Area Managers tell me some of their contemporaries earn way over a hundred grand a year.' 

'That could be right, they could be picking up forty or fifty thousand in commissions' 

'That's a b...lot of windows!' 

'My reps are all 'generation X'ers' - they want big money, they want flashy cars and don't mind paying the FBT to drive BMW's!' 

'A couple of years ago we reviewed our whole system of commissions for sales reps - now we pay everyone a higher base rate, give them a limited choice from a range of pre tax-benefits, but pay smaller commissions'