News Corp-controlled real estate listings portal REA Group has ordered an urgent review into its payroll over concerns some staff members may not have been paid the right amount in commissions.
REA, which announced a record interim dividend payment on Friday, wrote to staff on the same day to inform them consultancy KPMG was reviewing payments over concerns that provider Ascender had not remunerated staff properly by miscalculating tax.
Industry sources familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity, said the KPMG review will assess pay from July 2021 until now. The scale of potential underpayment is unclear.
“We recently informed a small number of REA employees that they had been impacted by a payroll issue where our external pay provider, Ascender, did not deduct the appropriate amount of tax from some payments,” an REA spokesperson said. “We are working with Ascender to efficiently rectify this. We take matters like this very seriously and have engaged KPMG to conduct a thorough third-party review.”
REA Group is not the only media company to review its payments in recent years over concerns it had underpaid staff. ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ broadcaster the ABC was embroiled in multiple underpayment scandals over the past few years. Large Australian companies such as Australia Post, Woolworths, Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Coles have also been accused of widespread staff underpayments.
