Film, Television and Digital Games Survey- Distribution of Film and Television

Employment is a headcount of all persons who worked for the business as proprietors, partners, salaried directors or other employees in the last pay period ending in June 2022.  Employment should be reported at this final pay period even if it was not the last pay period in the business' financial reporting year. Report headcount rather than number of persons on a Full Time Equivalent (FTE) basis. The count excludes casual or seasonal employees who are on the payroll but did not work during this final pay period.

Proprietors, partners, salaried directors and other employees should be included in both Question 3 and Question 4. Please ensure each person is counted only once to provide an accurate total number of persons.

If you are the owner-operator or partner of an unincorporated business, include yourself (and other partners) in Question 3(a) and in the relevant section of Question 4. Owners/directors of Pty Ltd companies should not be counted as working proprietors, but should be included in Question 3(b). Non-salaried directors are excluded and should not be counted in Employment.

Employees should be reported in the category that best reflects their role in the business. For employees who perform multiple roles within a business, report them in the category that best describes the role/activity which they spent the most time undertaking during the last pay period in June 2022. Employees who perform multiple roles should therefore only be reported once in Question 4.

• Contractors and subcontractors who are other businesses, (i.e. have their own ABN and are paid on a fee for service or commission only basis), should not be counted in Employment.
• If this business paid another business for contract staff, and those people were on the payroll of the other business, those people should not be counted in Employment for this business.
• Persons employed on a fixed-term contract, should be included as permanent full-time or permanent part-time employees if they were paid through the payroll in the last pay period of June 2022 and Pay As You Go (PAYG) tax was deducted for them.

This question evaluates income from the distribution of content in Australia. Businesses should report any income derived from distribution in the relevant categories. 

Transactional video on demand (TVOD) has been separated from subscription services to differentiate on-demand content and pay-per-view content. Examples of TVOD include iTunes or Google Play.

Royalties income (Question 6) includes payments received under merchandise and other licensing arrangements, payments for the use of patents and copyrights and income from franchising fee's. All royalties received in the reference period should be reported here. 

Government funding or investment should not be recorded as income from distribution of film, video and television content, even if it was received for a specific project. All government funding received should be reported as Other income at Question 10. This includes funding for operational costs, such as payroll subsidies, and funding for specific capital items, such as business vehicles or production equipment.

• Wages and salaries including provisions for employee entitlements (Question 12(a)) does not include contractors or sub-contractors operating under their own ABN. Please report gross (i.e. before tax) wages and salaries. Capitalised wages and salaries (i.e. wages and salaries for work relating to the creation of capital assets) should be excluded.
• Payments made to another business for recruitment services (i.e. conducting interviews, screening job applicants) and supply of staff on a fee or contract basis, where the staff entitlements are paid by the business supplying the employees, should be recorded in Payments to other businesses (e.g. employment agencies) for staff (Question 12(b)). Any costs incurred by your business in the conduct of its own recruitment processes should be reported separately to Labour costs in the relevant expense item.
• Other labour costs (Question 12(c)) includes labour costs not reported elsewhere such as employer contributions paid into superannuation. This does not include personal superannuation contributions for business owners not drawing a wage. Additionally, payroll tax should be included. Payroll tax is levied by State/Territory governments on businesses with large payrolls (usually greater than $0.5 million for the year). It does not refer to income tax withholding for employees (Pay As You Go tax).

Royalties expenses are payments made for the use of rights or intellectual property owned by another business or individuals. Industry specific royalty expenses derived from the distribution of film, television, video and merchandising should be recorded in Question 15(a). All other royalties expenses such as payments under licensing arrangements, payments for the use of patents and copyrights, including music and literary rights and payments for the use of program format rights should be reported at Question 15(b).

This question is where the remainder of the business' operational expenses will be reported, provided they have not been separately requested in any other expense question. Capitalised expenses should be excluded. Payments made under the Australian Government’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme should also be excluded.

Multi-state data is only requested from businesses that are expected to have multi-state operations. If your form includes a question on multi-state operations, you are required to report the business' employment, wages and salaries and income by state/territory. If the business has been requested to report multi-state data but only operated in one state during the reference period, then all activity should still be reported at that state.