ACT’s Capital Chemist pharmacist-owner Andrew Topp (pictured right) said if doctors are granted a payroll tax exemption by the government, pharmacists too should get the same treatment, The Canberra Times has reported. Topp was quoted as saying all healthcare professionals should be subject to the same tax rules. “If they’re going to make an exemption for doctors, could we have it for every healthcare professional, please? “We [pharmacists] see more people than doctors do, that’s for sure,” he recently told the publication. “The question of an exemption for one set of healthcare professionals becomes unfair.” Topp said most of the pharmacists at Capital Chemist were employed directly, but they sometimes had locums employed on contracts. “[My understanding is that the] short-term contract is captured under the payroll tax umbrella, and is then declared as part of the income,” Topp explained. “So pharmacies have been paying this tax according to those rules for decades,” he added. If pharmacists were exempt from payroll tax, services and medications would be cheaper, he explained. “It can be a significant amount of money, and that becomes a business expense that needs to be passed on to consumers. “That means higher prices or reduced services,” he added. “Those pharmacies paying payroll taxes have to recoup that directly or indirectly from their patients. “So finding a way to give payroll tax exemptions, would then flow through to patients as savings,” he commented. Topp agreed with the doctor lobby groups that imposing the payroll tax on GP clinics was “not fair” and “a bit illogical” as the gov’t is providing “billions in subsidies to encourage bulk billing, but then taxing doctors retrospectively”. JG