Personal Injury Lawyer In Thornlie, WA

The 2026 Tax Change That Decides How Much of Your Settlement You Keep

The single most important thing to understand before you settle a WorkCover claim in 2026 is one most injured workers are never told. In 2025 the ATO issued Class Ruling CR 2025/88, covering settlements under WA’s Workers Compensation and Injury Management Act 2023. It draws a hard line through your settlement.

The income-replacement portion, the money that stands in for the wages you would have earned, is now assessable as ordinary income. You declare it, and it is taxed, in the single financial year you receive it. The rest of a typical settlement is treated differently: medical and health expenses, rehabilitation expenses, and permanent impairment compensation are generally not taxed as income.

Why this matters for a Thornlie worker: if you redeem years of weekly payments into one lump sum, that income portion can land in one tax year and push you into a higher bracket. A worker on an ordinary wage can face a tax bill they never saw coming. WorkCover WA has published guidance confirming the treatment, and through early 2026 some insurers grew so unsure about it that settlements slowed while the dust settled.

A lawyer who knows the ruling structures the agreement around it: negotiating the income component on a gross basis so tax and the Medicare levy are accounted for, and making sure the non-taxable heads of compensation are clearly identified in the deed. Get that wrong and the difference is real money. This is general information, not personal tax advice, and your own position depends on your circumstances, so confirm it with your lawyer and accountant before you sign anything. You can read the ruling itself at the ATO’s Class Ruling CR 2025/88.

What WA’s 2023 Workers Compensation Act Changed for Thornlie Claims

The Workers Compensation and Injury Management Act 2023 started on 1 July 2024, and the first two years have been bumpy in ways that can affect your outcome.

The change most people never hear about sits in the second edition of WorkCover WA’s permanent impairment guidelines. Assessors are now told not to take the prospect of future surgery into account when they carry out a whole person impairment assessment. That reverses the position the Supreme Court had confirmed in East Metropolitan Health Service v Lee [2022] WASC 54. It is technical, but the effect is not: leaving future surgery out can lower your impairment percentage, and in WA you generally need a 15% whole person impairment to elect a common law claim for pain and suffering. A few percentage points can decide whether that door is open to you at all. If your treatment is still ongoing, the timing of your assessment is now a strategic decision, not a formality.

There was also a processing problem. Settlement approvals that used to take two or three weeks blew out to many weeks, and in some cases months, after the new Act commenced. The Law Society raised it, and the Minister acknowledged the backlog in April 2025 and said processing had returned to normal. If you were told your claim was “just waiting on approval” during that window, this is likely why.

Across the scheme, WorkCover WA recorded 29,304 claims in 2024/25 and paid out $1.645 billion. The return-to-work rate was 73.9% at three months. Those are the current operating conditions you are walking into if you are injured in Thornlie, and they are the reason having someone who tracks the changes is worth more now than it was three years ago.

The Thornlie Roads and Worksites Behind Most Local Injury Claims

Real local knowledge comes down to specific roads. Here is one that matters. The intersection of Garden Street and Nicholson Road, on the Thornlie and Canning Vale boundary, was voted the fifth-riskiest metropolitan intersection in the RAC’s 2025 Risky Roads survey, out of more than 18,000 nominations, the most the survey has ever received. Drivers described a confusing layout with little chance to turn or cross traffic safely.

This is not just a survey result. Main Roads WA is building a grade-separated overpass over that roundabout, part of the Nicholson Road, Garden Street and Yale Road project, specifically to improve safety and cut delays. Early works began in late 2024, with utility relocations continuing through 2026. If you drive Nicholson Road, Garden Street, Yale Road or Spencer Road on a Thornlie commute, you are using an intersection the state has formally flagged as a problem. A crash there is exactly the kind of ICWA claim Soul Legal runs.

The other side of local injury in Thornlie is work. The suburb sits inside the City of Gosnells, and the neighbouring Canning Vale industrial area is one of the largest freight, warehousing and manufacturing zones in the southern metro. Manual handling, loading docks and machinery are where the WorkCover claims come from. Knowing the kind of work Thornlie does is what lets us anticipate the injuries, the insurers and the arguments before they arrive. Sources: RAC Risky Roads and the Main Roads WA Nicholson Road and Garden Street project.