Claim long service leave

Types of claims

10-year long service leave claim

• this claim can be made after 10 years of service (2,200 service credits)
• provides you with 8.67 weeks of paid long service leave
• you must not be working during the claim period
• a minimum of five days leave applies per claim unless it is your final claim

Permanently leaving the industry claim

• can be made if you have permanently stopped working in the building and construction industry
• you must be registered with QLeave (or an interstate scheme) for seven years and have accrued at least 1,155 service credits
• your membership will be cancelled if you make this type of claim.

Personal representative claim

• if one of the above entitlements exists, an authorised representative may make a long service leave claim for a deceased worker.
• a person listed as a beneficiary of a deceased worker's superannuation may not necessarily be an executor or administrator (this is because a deceased worker may opt to leave their superannuation to a beneficiary not included in a will).

Maximum claim payments

A capped weekly rate of pay for all claims was introduced on 1 January 2009 to ensure the future of the portable long service leave scheme.

The cap rate is reviewed before 1 July each year. At this time, the Minister fixes the cap for the following financial year.

A cap of $1,980 per week applies to all worker claims, and employer claims for reimbursement, paid by QLeave from 1 July 2019. There have been no changes to the claim cap for 2021-22 financial year.

Single Touch Payroll (STP) exemption

QLeave is exempt from reporting long service leave claims paid to workers through Single Touch Payroll (STP) until the end of the 2020-21 financial year. We have requested an extension of this exemption until 30 June 2022.

When your long service leave claim is paid, we’ll provide you with a PAYG payment summary for tax purposes instead of reporting through STP.

Find out more.

Completing a paper claim?

If you're completing a long service leave claim by paper form, ensure you select yes or no for question 'are you claiming the tax-free threshold?'. If left blank, we'll process the claim as if you are claiming the tax-free threshold which could carry tax implications. Once a claim has been paid this cannot be altered.

How much tax will I pay on my long service leave payment?

We deduct tax from long service leave payments at the applicable rate as required by Australian tax laws. The rate used to calculate the tax payable on your claim depends on the type of claim you’ve made and your gross weekly wages.

For taking leave and standard leaving the industry claims, we use your gross weekly wage to calculate the amount withheld from the ATO’s weekly tax table. The amount withheld is not calculated on the lump sum of your leave payment.

If you’re making a leaving the industry claim and you’ve selected genuine redundancy, invalidity or early retirement as your reason for leaving the industry, your payment will be taxed at the applicable withholding rate of 32% as required by Australian tax laws. You can find out more about this on the ATO website. Please note, if you don’t provide evidence to support one of these leaving the industry reasons, your tax will be calculated on your gross weekly wage using the ATO’s weekly tax table, as above.