A restaurant bookkeeper for Melbourne, where payroll tax starts at $1 million.

A second restaurant can put both sites into payroll tax

Victoria charges payroll tax at 4.85% on wages above $1 million a year, and employer super counts as wages. That threshold sits below Queensland's $1.3 million and South Australia's $1.5 million. A single restaurant needs about $19,200 a week of wages and super to reach it on its own.

Two restaurants in two companies don't get $1 million each when the same people control both. The State Revenue Office groups them, which for a company means more than 50% of the voting power at directors' meetings or of a class of voting shares, and treats the group as a single entity with one threshold.

Take two restaurants, each in its own company, with the same two owners:

• First restaurant: $11,500 a week of wages plus 12% super, or $669,760 a year
• Second restaurant: $8,000 a week of wages plus 12% super, or $465,920 a year
• Group wages: $1,135,680
• Above the $1 million threshold: $135,680
• Payroll tax at 4.85%: $6,580.48 a year, about $127 a week

On its own, neither restaurant would pay any. Once the group passes the threshold you have to register, and on monthly returns the tax is paid by the 7th of the next month. If the second site is in Geelong or Ballarat, that business may pay the regional rate of 1.2125%, but only if at least 85% of its Victorian wages go to regional employees, and each business in a group is tested on its own.

We'd run this sum before the second lease is signed. Our piece on restaurant break-even shows why a second site needs its own sum.

Grand Final Friday and Cup Day are Victoria's own public holidays

Pay rates come from the Restaurant Industry Award, the same award a restaurant uses in any state. It pays 225% of the minimum hourly rate to full-time and part-time staff on a public holiday and 250% to casuals. Our piece on which award covers a cafe or restaurant has the test for hotel-run venues.

What Victoria sets is the calendar. These are the days on its 2026 list that change a restaurant's wage bill:

• Friday before the AFL Grand Final: 25 September in 2026
• Melbourne Cup Day: Tuesday 3 November, statewide unless a council outside Melbourne has arranged a local holiday instead
• Easter: Saturday and Sunday as well as Good Friday and Easter Monday
• Christmas: Boxing Day falls on Saturday 26 December, so Monday 28 December is a public holiday too

On Cup Day a casual Level 3 cook costs $69.93 an hour against $34.96 on a usual Tuesday, at the award rates in force since 1 July 2026. Super is due on the penalty as well, because public holiday penalties count as qualifying earnings and the super guarantee rate is 12%. Our piece on payday super covers how it now goes out with every pay run.

WorkSafe rates restaurants at 1.181% of wages and super for 2026-27

A restaurant with staff needs WorkCover insurance unless it has no apprentices and pays $7,500 or less in remuneration a year. If your company employs you, you're its worker as well. You have 60 days to register from when you first need cover, and you choose a WorkSafe agent to manage the policy.

WorkSafe classes cafes and restaurants together, at an industry rate of 1.181% for 2026-27, and remuneration includes super. Up to $200,000 of remuneration, the premium is worked from that rate. Above it, WorkSafe counts your claims: a record better than the industry average lowers the premium, and a worse one raises it.

For 2026-27 the annual premium is due on 1 November 2026, and small employers certify last year's remuneration by 19 March 2027. If WorkSafe's estimate of your remuneration is 20% or more below what you expect to pay, you have to update it. Both figures come out of the pay runs we process in Xero.

Casual staff build long service leave in Victoria

Long service leave comes from state law. Under Victoria's Long Service Leave Act 2018, an employee is entitled after 7 years' continuous employment with one employer, and casuals accrue it too. The state's portable scheme covers community services, contract cleaning and security, so in a restaurant the leave builds up with you as the employer.

A casual who started with you in 2019 can reach seven years in 2026. We'd check that every start date in Xero goes back to the first shift, so the entitlement is right when someone asks for it.

A retail lease can't pass land tax on to you

If your restaurant's lease is a retail lease under the Retail Leases Act 2003, the landlord can't make you pay land tax or capital costs. You pay only the outgoings the lease sets out, and the landlord has to give you an estimate before each year and an audited statement within three months after it.

A retail lease dispute has to go to the Victorian Small Business Commission before VCAT will hear it. We code the rent and outgoings bills as they arrive, so the audited statement can be checked line by line against what you paid.

Melbourne restaurants, done from Bella Vista

We work remotely from our office at 217/14 Lexington Dr, Bella Vista, in Sydney. A restaurant in Fitzroy, Richmond, the CBD or St Kilda gets the same week as one in Sydney: supplier invoices sent to one capture email and coded as they arrive, payroll processed in your Xero file, the bank reconciled, and a P&L on one page.

We look after over thirty venues in every state and territory this way. The week itself is laid out on our restaurant bookkeepers page, and our Melbourne cafe page covers WorkSafe for a smaller employer and what Cup Day costs a cafe.

What we'd check first on a Melbourne restaurant's file

• Payroll tax: every business the owners control, and the group's wages and super against $1 million.
• WorkSafe: the industry classification on the policy, and that 2025-26 remuneration is certified on time.
• Public holidays: that Grand Final Friday, 25 September, was paid at public holiday rates.
• Long service leave: a start date for every casual, back to the first shift.
• STP: that every pay run was filed. In files we've taken over we have found pay runs processed but never filed through STP, sometimes for months.

We go through these in the historic clean-up, which is free and comes before the weekly work starts.

What restaurant bookkeeping and accounting cost with us

Core is $499 a month, about $115 a week, for payroll, supplier payments, reconciliation, the weekly P&L and a monthly call with Amit, who started Soul Burger and has spent 15 years in hospitality. Essentials, at $599, adds monthly IAS and quarterly BAS lodged by a registered tax agent. Foundation, at $799, adds company and personal tax returns, and our hospitality accounting page covers that side.

Every package is on our pricing.