Expenses and benefits: scholarship for an employee's family member

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What's exempt

You don’t have to pay or report anything if the scholarship is ‘fortuitous’. This means that there’s no direct connection between the employee working for your business and their family member getting a scholarship.

A scholarship is fortuitous if all the following apply:

  • the person with the scholarship is in full-time education
  • the scholarship would still have gone to that person even if their family member didn’t work for you
  • the scholarship is run from a trust fund or under a scheme
  • 25% or fewer of the payments made by the fund or scheme are for employment-linked scholarships