R2 — Victoria Compliance & Business Setup Research

Mission: Current (August 2026) Victoria-specific and Commonwealth business-setup obligations, costs and lead times for starting an NDIS provider company in Victoria. REQ IDs served: REQ-SYS-06, REQ-SYS-01, REQ-CON-01, REQ-CON-02 Date compiled: 2026-08-20 Status: Research conducted via web search/fetch against a ~30 tool-call ceiling. Several figures could not be verified directly on the primary authority's own page (fetch blocked, paywalled, or content not rendered as plain text) and are sourced instead to a secondary aggregator that cites the primary authority — these are marked Medium confidence with the reason stated. Genuine gaps are listed in UNVERIFIED.

FINDINGS BY QUESTION

Q1 — Company incorporation (ASIC / business names, FY2026-27)

ASIC fees are indexed on 1 July each year to CPI. The current (FY2026-27, effective 1 July 2026) fee schedule could not be pulled as plain figures directly from asic.gov.au (the live page renders as templated placeholders to the fetch tool), so figures are sourced to a secondary registration-agent site that explicitly cites and was reviewed against ASIC's official fee schedule on 6 May 2026:

• Pty Ltd company registration (Form 201): $636

• Proprietary company annual review fee: $342

• Business name registration — 1 year: $47

• Business name registration — 3 years: $108

Confidence: Medium (secondary source citing ASIC, not the primary ASIC page itself — the primary ASIC.gov.au fee pages returned templated/variable placeholders to the fetch tool rather than resolved numbers). Recommend a human confirm these four figures directly on asic.gov.au/for-business-and-companies/forms-and-fees/all-fees/fees-for-commonly-lodged-documents before use in any costed proposal.

Q2 — ABN / TFN / GST / PAYG withholding

• ABN: free to apply; via the Australian Business Register (abr.gov.au) or business.gov.au. Successful applications are approved instantly online; if referred for manual review, ABR aims to complete review within 20 business days, with written confirmation posted within 14 days of approval.

• TFN: companies must hold a business TFN (separate from any individual TFN); free, applied for via ABR/ATO, typically processed alongside or shortly after ABN.

• GST: registration is free; mandatory once (projected) annual turnover reaches $75,000; registration is done via the ABR/ATO business portal at the same time as, or after, the ABN.

• PAYG withholding: free registration, required before the business pays wages to any employee, director or certain contractors.

No fee is charged by the ATO/ABR for any of these four registrations; the only "cost" is professional/agent fees if a business chooses to use a paid registration service.

Q3 — myID / RAM / PRODA for NDIS provider portal access

PRODA is being retired as the identity-verification mechanism for NDIS Commission and NDIS provider portals. Per the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission:

• Transition window: 7 December 2025 to 30 September 2026. After the transition ends, PRODA can no longer be used to access NDIS Commission portals.

• Replacement: myID (the rebranded myGovID, the Commonwealth's Digital ID app) for individual identity verification, plus RAM (Relationship Authorisation Manager) for authorising individuals to act online on behalf of the provider business.

• Identity strength required: staff generally need myID at the Standard level; the provider's principal authority (business owner/director) needs Strong myID, which requires a valid Australian passport (or one expired within the last 3 years).

This directly affects REQ-SYS-06 process design: the setup workflow must budget time for principal authority and staff myID setup and RAM linking before NDIS Commission portal access is possible, and this must be complete before 30 September 2026 for any provider still on PRODA.

Q4 — NDIS Worker Screening Check (Victoria)

• Issuing authority: Victorian NDIS Worker Screening Unit, delivered through Service Victoria on behalf of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH), under the national NDIS worker screening scheme.

• Fee: $139.20 per applicant (the Victorian government page does not appear to differentiate a separate volunteer/self-employed rate on the page fetched; refunds are available where an applicant is required to hold both an NDIS Worker Screening Check and a Working with Children Check, to avoid paying twice). Confidence Medium on the volunteer/self-employed distinction specifically — see UNVERIFIED.

• Validity: 5 years from the date of the clearance notice, unless surrendered or revoked; renewal can start 90 days before expiry.

• Processing time: up to 3 weeks after verification for most applications (often shorter); manual (non-digital-identity) applications add roughly 2 further weeks; timeframes can extend further for common names or complex criminal-history checks. Victoria operates a "no clearance, no start" policy for risk-assessed roles (in force since 1 February 2021).

Q5 — Working with Children Check (Victoria) — current status in 2026

The Working with Children Check (WWCC) has not been renamed or replaced by a "Worker Screening Clearance" in Victoria as of August 2026. The governing law is the Worker Screening Act 2020 (Vic), but that is the name of the legislation, not a rebrand of the check itself — the product remains officially the "Working with Children Check."

• Fee (per secondary source citing the current schedule): employees $139.20; volunteers free; renewal (existing employee check) $105.30; upgrade from volunteer to employee check $139.20.

• Validity: 5 years, unless suspended, cancelled or surrendered earlier.

• Who needs it: anyone in "child-related work" as defined by the Act, including disability support workers whose role brings them into contact with children (e.g. supporting NDIS participants under 18). Confidence Medium on the exact fee figures — sourced to a secondary legal-information site, not confirmed verbatim on workingwithchildren.vic.gov.au or service.vic.gov.au fee pages directly (those pages did not render fee text to the fetch tool). Recommend confirming on service.vic.gov.au before publishing as a firm cost.

Q6 — WorkSafe Victoria workers compensation

• Registration threshold: could not be confirmed with a primary WorkSafe Victoria source within the tool-call budget (the dedicated "register as an employer" page 404'd on fetch, and searches did not surface a clear current wage-threshold figure from worksafe.vic.gov.au). This is listed in UNVERIFIED rather than stated as fact.

• Premium calculation: WorkSafe Victoria confirms premiums are calculated on the employer's rateable remuneration (broadly, gross wages plus super and other remuneration-related payments), under a formula set out in the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 Premiums Order for the relevant premium year. The average premium rate for 2026–27 is 1.8% of rateable remuneration state-wide, with a stated minimum premium of $400 (plus GST).

• Industry rate for social assistance/disability support: WorkSafe Victoria states industry-specific rates for 2026–27 are set out in a Special Gazette (No. S 284) referenced from the industry-rates page; the specific numeric rate for the disability-services/social-assistance WIC (industry) class could not be extracted from the page content returned by the fetch tool. Listed in UNVERIFIED — a human should pull the exact rate from the WorkSafe "Industry rates and key dates" page/gazette for the applicable WIC code.

Q7 — Insurance costs (public liability, professional indemnity, management liability)

No government-published fixed price exists for these (they are market-priced by insurers/brokers), so only indicative ranges from broker/insurer marketing content are available — flagged Medium confidence throughout, as figures are self-reported by commercial insurance comparison sites, not audited or government data.

• Public liability (general small-business Australia): typically $400–$1,500/year for $5–10M cover for most small businesses; sole traders/low-risk operators from about $470/year ($39/month); scales roughly with turnover (very approximate 1–2% of turnover) and risk category, e.g. micro business (<$100k turnover) $400–$900, small business ($100k–$1M turnover) $800–$3,000/year.

• Professional indemnity: no single indicative figure could be confirmed within budget from a primary/authoritative source; multiple NDIS-specific broker sites (BizCover, NDISInsurance.com.au, upcover) advertise disability-support-worker cover "from" low monthly amounts (e.g. NDIS support worker cover from ~$33/month, i.e. roughly $400/year, quoted by MyCareSpace) but this is an individual support-worker product, not a company-level policy, and was not independently verified against a second source. Listed partly in UNVERIFIED.

• Management liability: no figure was retrieved within budget; listed in UNVERIFIED.

Overall guidance: treat all insurance figures in this report as indicative marketing figures only, not quotes — a real provider should obtain broker quotes.

Q8 — SCHADS Award and FY2026-27 wage increase

• Current award name/code confirmed: Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010, code MA000100 (Fair Work Commission award finder, calculate.fairwork.gov.au).

• Most recent Annual Wage Review decision: Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2025–26 decision, [2026] FWCFB 3500, handed down 2 June 2026, delivering a 4.75% increase to SCHADS Award minimum rates, effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Example movements cited: SACS Level 2.1 $34.58/hr → $36.22/hr; SACS Level 3.1 $38.65/hr → $40.49/hr; National Minimum Wage moved to $26.44/hr ($1,004.90/week).

Confidence: Medium — sourced to a secondary payroll/HR content site summarising the FWC decision; the primary fairwork.gov.au Annual Wage Review 2026 page could not be fetched directly (robots/timeout error). A human should verify the 4.75% figure and effective date directly against the Fair Work Commission decision [2026] FWCFB 3500 or fairwork.gov.au before relying on it for a budget.

Q9 — Victorian disability-sector-specific worker registration

The Victorian Disability Worker Commission (VDWC) operates a disability worker registration scheme under Victorian law. Per vdwc.vic.gov.au:

• Registration is currently free and voluntary (not mandatory) for individual disability workers in Victoria — it is promoted as a way to increase community/sector confidence, not a legal precondition to work.

• Eligible workers: anyone who personally delivers, or supervises/manages delivery of, disability supports/services involving more than incidental contact with a person with disability, where the primary purpose is to care for, treat or support that person.

• No registration fee applies (registration is free).

This is distinct from — and additional to — the mandatory NDIS Worker Screening Check (Q4) and, where applicable, the Working with Children Check (Q5).

Q10 — SIL/SDA and Victorian rooming house / residential tenancy / building requirements

Confirmed at a high level only; detailed rules could not be extracted within budget:

• DFFH (Department of Families, Fairness and Housing) publishes standards for providers operating rooming house and rental accommodation, and separate guidance for disability supported accommodation, via its "DFFH Service Providers" portal (providers.dffh.vic.gov.au), including pages titled "Standards in rooming house and rental accommodation," "Disability supported accommodation," and "Rooming houses."

• Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) in Victoria is also covered under the state's Big Housing Build / Homes Victoria program (homes.vic.gov.au) and is subject to NDIS SDA design standards at the Commonwealth level (outside this Victoria-specific scope).

• A sector legal-commentary source (NDS/sdaconsulting.com.au) flags that SIL/STA/MTA accommodation can be "operating illegally" if it does not comply with relevant residential tenancy or rooming house regulation — indicating this is a genuine compliance risk area, but the specific legal test was not extracted from primary content within budget.

The specific building/occupancy standards, registration thresholds (e.g. rooming house licensing/registration with local council under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act, and Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic) obligations) could not be confirmed with pinpoint citations in the time available. Listed in UNVERIFIED — recommend a follow-up research pass specifically on providers.dffh.vic.gov.au/disability-supported-accommodation and providers.dffh.vic.gov.au/rooming-houses, and on the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic) and rooming house licensing regime, only if SIL/SDA is confirmed in scope.

COST & LEAD TIME TABLE

SOURCES TABLE

UNVERIFIED / COULD NOT CONFIRM

1. Exact ASIC FY2026-27 fee figures direct from asic.gov.au — the live ASIC fee pages returned templated placeholder codes (e.g. {I02}, {BZA}) rather than resolved dollar figures to the fetch tool. Figures used ($636 / $342 / $47 / $108) are from a secondary source citing ASIC; a human should re-confirm on asic.gov.au directly before using in a formal budget.

1. WorkSafe Victoria employer registration wage threshold — could not confirm the exact wage figure at which a Victorian employer must register for WorkCover insurance; the dedicated registration page 404'd, and no reliable primary figure was found within budget.

1. WorkSafe Victoria industry-specific premium rate for disability support/social assistance services (2026-27 WIC rate) — the industry-rates page references Special Gazette No. S 284 as the source of industry rates but the specific numeric rate for this industry classification was not extracted.

1. Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2025-26 decision, confirmed directly on fairwork.gov.au — the primary Annual Wage Review 2026 page on fairwork.gov.au could not be fetched (robots.txt/timeout error). The 4.75% SCHADS increase figure and decision citation [2026] FWCFB 3500 come from a secondary payroll-content site and should be checked against the FWC decision itself.

1. Professional indemnity insurance indicative cost for a small disability provider (company-level, not individual worker) — no reliable, cross-checked figure was found within the tool-call budget. Individual NDIS support-worker policies were seen advertised "from" ~$33/month by one broker site, but this is not necessarily representative of company-level PI cover and was not independently corroborated.

1. Management liability insurance indicative cost — no figure was retrieved within budget.

1. NDIS Worker Screening Check — whether Victoria charges a separate/discounted fee for volunteers or self-employed applicants — the vic.gov.au page fetched did not clearly differentiate a volunteer/self-employed fee from the standard $139.20 fee (it only mentioned refund provisions for people needing both an NDIS check and a WWCC). Needs direct confirmation on vic.gov.au or service.vic.gov.au.

1. Detailed Victorian rooming house / Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic) / building and occupancy requirements applicable to SIL/SDA supported accommodation — only page existence was confirmed (via DFFH's provider portal); specific obligations, thresholds, and registration/licensing requirements were not extracted within budget. This should be revisited as a dedicated follow-up if SIL/SDA is confirmed in scope for the provider being set up.

1. TFN, GST and PAYG withholding — specific lead times — business.gov.au's tax registration page confirms these are free but does not state specific processing/lead times distinct from the ABN process; not independently sourced elsewhere within budget.

End of R2 report.