Dividend franking and tax can get a little confusing, especially when you’re dealing with partially franked dividends.
To figure out how much income you’ll be taxed on, you need to gross up the dividend by adding back the franking credits. This gives the ATO the full picture of the income that was originally earned (before company tax was taken out). Your dividend statement often includes this calculation, but sometimes you—or your accountant—will need to work it out manually.
What is a Franked Dividend?
Dividends represent a share of a company’s profits paid out to shareholders. In Australia, our dividend imputation system means companies can attach a franking credit to dividends. This credit reflects the tax the company has already paid on those profits—so shareholders don’t get taxed twice on the same income.
Franking credits essentially give you a tax credit for the company tax already paid. These credits can reduce the amount of tax you owe—or even result in a refund, depending on your personal tax rate.
How Does This Work in Practice?
You are the sole shareholders in Company ABD Ltd. ABC pays out all of its after-tax profit as dividends. If ABC makes $1,000 in pre-tax profits it will have to pay tax on that amount (at a rate of 30%). This means ABC will pay $300 to the ATO, leaving $700 available to shareholders.
As shareholder, you will receive a cheque for $700 and a dividend statement which shows $300 of imputation credits; another name for franking credits.
To calculate your taxable income, you add the cash received ($700) plus the franking credits ($300), to give you $1,000. You’ll notice this equals the income of ABC Ltd before it paid tax.
| Tax Rate | Tax payable | Franking credit | Tax payable / refund |
| 43% | $430 | $300 | $130 |
| 30% | $300 | $300 | $- |
| 18% | $180 | $300 | $120 refund |
You’ll notice that at the lower tax rate, the shareholder gets a cash refund from the ATO. In the 2019 election, the Labour party proposed scrapping refunds, meaning the franking credits would effectively be lost. Turns out, that was a highly unpopular move among certain parts of the electorate.
How to Gross Up your Dividend
Companies may also pay partly franked dividends. That’s why our earnings tables usually include the level of franking.
It’s unfair to directly compare a stock paying fully-franked dividends with one paying unfranked or partly franked dividends. You have to ‘gross up’ first. Here’s the formula:
Grossed up dividend = dividend x (1 (franking level x (tax rate/(1-tax rate))))
Let’s compare an unfranked dividend of $120 with a 50% franked dividend of $100.
The taxable amount of the unfranked dividend is $120.
To calculate taxable amount of the partially franked dividend, we need to gross up the dividend as follows:
This simplifies down to $100 x 1.243, or $124.30.
If you receive a dividend of $70, then the grossed up dividend is $100.
We put together a helpful video to learn more about Franked Dividends.
