Personal Injury Lawyer In South Perth, WA

The 2024 to 2026 changes that decide what you actually keep

This is where the real questions start. Four things shifted in the last two years, and each one changes the size or the tax treatment of your South Perth claim. Getting them right is what decides your payout.

Part of your workers’ compensation settlement is now taxable

For a long time people assumed injury compensation was tax-free. That is no longer the full picture. The ATO’s Class Ruling CR 2025/88 confirms that the income-compensation portion of a WorkCover WA settlement is assessable as ordinary income under section 6-5 of the tax law, because it stands in for lost wages. The ruling applies from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2029. The other parts of a settlement stay tax-free: medical and health expenses, workplace rehabilitation, permanent impairment compensation, dust disease compensation, and miscellaneous expenses are all disregarded under the injury exemption in section 118-37, so you do not declare them.

Here is why that matters for a redemption. If you fold years of weekly payments into a single lump sum, the whole income portion can be taxed in the one financial year you receive it, which can push you into a higher bracket than if you had drawn that income year by year. The practical fix is to know the split before you sign, and to negotiate the income component on a gross basis so a tax bill does not eat into it later. A lawyer who structures the settlement with this ruling in mind protects money that would otherwise go straight to the ATO.

The permanent impairment rules were rewritten from 1 July 2026

WorkCover WA replaced its impairment guidelines with a second edition that took effect on 1 July 2026, and the change is not cosmetic. Under section 1.65, you can now request a special assessment before your condition has fully stabilised, once at least 18 months have passed since the injury. That 18-month clock runs from the date you were injured, not the date you lodged, which lets some workers reach a permanent impairment figure and settle sooner than the old rules allowed.

The catch sits in the same section. The assessor has to rate you on how you present on the day of the examination. They are not permitted to factor in surgery you are still waiting on, recovery they expect, or deterioration they fear. So the timing of that assessment can move your percentage either way, and the percentage is what the whole permanent impairment payment is calculated from. Book it at the wrong point in your recovery and you can lock in a number that does not reflect where you end up. This is exactly the kind of timing decision you can get wrong if all you are told is to “get an assessment.”

The 2026/27 dollar caps that set the ceiling on your claim

Your compensation is bounded by figures WorkCover re-indexes every July, so the figure that matters is the one for your date of injury, not last year’s. For 2026/27, effective 1 July 2026, the General Maximum Amount, the overall cap on income compensation plus permanent impairment, is $284,448, up from $273,220 the year before. Medical and health expenses are capped at 60 percent of that figure, which is $170,669, and workplace rehabilitation sits just under $20,000. On the motor vehicle side, WA still applies a threshold to pain-and-suffering claims: for 2025/26 an award below $26,500 pays nothing, and general damages run to a ceiling above $500,000, both indexed each year.

Numbers indexed by WorkCover WA and the Insurance Commission of WA. Confirm the figure that applies to your claim, since it depends on your date of injury.

If you deliver food or ride for a platform, a new insurance layer opened on 17 August 2026

South Perth runs on delivery. The cafe strip along Angelo Street, the Mends Street precinct by the ferry and Perth Zoo, and the student population near Curtin all pull a steady flow of riders and drivers who were, until recently, outside the usual injury schemes. From 17 August 2026, a Fair Work Commission order requires every delivery platform operating in Australia to fund a “reasonable minimum level” of personal accident insurance for its workers, covering roughly 250,000 people in on-demand delivery. The order is enforceable, but the benefit level, the waiting period, and the policy structure were left undefined, and it is an interim measure while related rideshare and parcel cases run their course. If you are hurt riding or driving for a platform around South Perth, the classic ICWA and WorkCover pathways may not be your only option, and you may hold cover you do not know about. That is worth a call before you assume you have nothing.