Leading Canberra doctors have eviscerated a new ACT government policy, calling it "bribery and corruption" and "a rude shock".
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Medical practices that bulk bill 65 per cent of all patients will be exempt from payroll tax in the ACT for two years.
The fee applies to clinics with a payroll of $2 million a year or more.
Asking clinics to bulk-bill 65 per cent of patients was "too high a bar", Royal College of General Practitioners NSW and ACT chair Professor Charlotte Hespe said.
'When I said, 'oh, that's a bit of bribery and corruption', it's a very hard-nosed, hardline approach," she said.
"[They are] sort of saying, if you do what we want you to do, then we won't tax you, rather than acknowledging ... how much it costs to run a practice," Dr Hespe said.
"When we add an additional tax to what's such a fragile system at the moment, there will be no alternative but for services to be cut."
The policy announcement was a "rude shock", general practice registrar and Australian Medical Association ACT board member, Dr Betty Ge, said.
Dr Ge said it was likely payroll tax would be applied to the clinic she works at, Ochre Health in Garran, so she was considering moving to part-time GP work.
"Because of the uncertainty [of] whether my practice will survive this payroll tax ... I can't commit to full-time work as a GP, I have to have a variety of work which can provide me some certainty and financial stability," she said.
"I could potentially pick up surgery assisting work or doing locum jobs for the hospital system."
Dr Ge said the 65 per cent bulk-billing rate was "unrealistic" for most practices, and would not have the desired effect of increasing bulk-billing in Canberra.
"I don't know how the government modelled that number," she said.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the new measure would give general practices time to adapt, seek advice and align with payroll tax obligations.
"The temporary exemption allows medical practices to align with payroll tax requirements without the risk of unexpected retrospective assessments," he said.
AMA ACT president-elect Dr Kerrie Aust - who has met with Mr Barr - said the AMA's offer to help the government model the potential impact of the payroll tax had not been taken up.
"I'm not sure that there's a real understanding yet about how this is actually going to affect the financial viability of general practice when it's already just under such enormous pressure to keep the doors open in Canberra," she said.
The government's promise that payroll would not be retrospectively applied would "stop some of the panic" felt by doctors, Dr Aust said.
Dr Ge said the difficulty Canberra had in attracting junior doctors to the GP trainee program was going to become even harder.
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She said junior doctors already took a pay-cut to train as a GP.
"Either we continue to sacrifice our income ... or we have to transfer the tax onto our patients," she said.
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