---
title: "Agent 'marketing support' now reads as a commission — unless you can show otherwise"
description: "Australia's 2025 ESOS integrity law can turn agent 'marketing support' into a reportable commission. The in-connection-with test, a yes/no/maybe table, and the rate question nobody can answer."
date: "2026-06-12"
category: "Business strategy"
keywords: "Business strategy"
author: "Raphael Arias"
cover: "/images/blog/blog-marketing-budget-education-agent-commission-australia.jpg"
lang: "en"
wordCount: 5590
url: https://qualyhq.com/blog/marketing-budget-education-agent-commission-australia
---
## Site navigation

- [For schools](/international-education/for-schools.md) — For international education schools
- [For agents](/international-education/for-education-agents.md) — For international education agents
- [Explore](/training.md) — Watch videos on how to use Qualy
- [About](/about.md) — Learn about Qualy's mission and values
- [Pricing](/pricing)
- [5-min demo](/demo.md)
- [Login](https://dashboard.qualyhq.com)

# Agent 'marketing support' now reads as a commission — unless you can show otherwise

> Australia's 2025 ESOS integrity law can turn agent 'marketing support' into a reportable commission. The in-connection-with test, a yes/no/maybe table, and the rate question nobody can answer.

Under Australia's Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2025, "marketing support" your institution gives an agent becomes a reportable education agent commission whenever it's *in connection with* recruiting, advising or otherwise dealing with specific overseas students. General brand co-marketing not tied to any individual student can fall outside. Pay "marketing" above market rate to disguise a per-student fee and the Department says that's avoidance — and failing to report when the Secretary asks is a 60-penalty-unit strict-liability offence for the provider, not the agent.

You run a registered provider — a university, an RTO delivering VET, an ELICOS college — and somewhere in your agent agreements there's a "marketing contribution." A few thousand dollars toward an agent's education-fair stand. A co-branded landing page. A slice of a social campaign in their source market. For years this money lived in a comfortable grey zone: not quite commission, not quite nothing, rarely written down with much rigour. As of December 2025 that comfort is gone, and the legal exposure sits with **you**, not the agent.

The thesis of this piece is narrow and, we think, defensible: **marketing money becomes a reportable commission the moment it's tied to recruiting or dealing with specific students, and only genuinely general brand marketing escapes — and the entire fight is over which of those two things any given payment actually is.**

"It depends" is the wrong answer. The new law draws an identifiable line. This article walks it end to end: the statutory definition paraphrased plainly, a yes/no/maybe table of the arrangements you actually run, the penalty mechanics, and the one question the legislation pointedly refuses to answer — what marketing rate is "too high."

We're a payments company, not your lawyer or your compliance officer, and this is general information about how the rules read, not advice on your specific contracts. One clause of honesty up front and we'll move on: get your arrangements reviewed by someone who can give advice. But the test itself isn't obscure, and your finance and admissions teams should be able to apply it before ASQA or the Department does.

## Why this lands on providers, not agents

Start with who's exposed, because most agent-facing coverage gets this backwards. The reporting obligation in the [Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2025](https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2025A00074/asmade/text) — Royal Assent 4 December 2025, provisions commencing the next day — sits on the **registered provider**. You must list your agents publicly on your website, report agent details in PRISMS, and, when the Secretary requests it, hand over the dollars and the description of every benefit you gave each agent. The agent files nothing. The penalty for getting it wrong is yours.

That reframes the marketing-budget question entirely. It's not "will my agent get in trouble for taking this?" It's "have I, the provider, correctly classified and recorded every benefit I've handed out — including the ones my marketing team booked as marketing?" If the answer is shaky, the strict-liability offence we'll get to below is pointed at your institution.

## The new definition, paraphrased so you can use it

Before December 2025 the ESOS Act leaned on a relationship-based idea of an "agent." No formal written agreement, and much of what an agent did was invisible to regulators. The Act replaced that with an **activity-based** definition and, for the first time, defined the commission itself. Here is the operative language, paraphrased closely from the Department of Education's own [fact sheet](https://www.education.gov.au/esos-framework/resources/2025-fact-sheet-education-agents-and-commissions) and the Act.

### Who counts as an education agent now

An **education agent** is now any entity — in or outside Australia, and not your permanent employee — that does any of: recruits overseas or intending overseas students; gives them information, advice or assistance about enrolment; or *otherwise deals with* them, in relation to your institution. The fact sheet's examples of "otherwise dealing" are expansive and include "digital, print or electronic media, or promotional event marketing," distributing your endorsed material, counselling, fee collection, and PRISMS administration. The definition is **activity-based with no automatic exclusions** — the Department says this explicitly, precisely so a role or platform can't be used to dodge it.

### The two edges providers miss

Two edges of that definition are worth pinning to the wall. Only **permanent** employees are excluded: the fact sheet states that casual staff and contractors who perform any of these activities *are* education agents — which captures the contract recruiter your admissions team brings in for peak season, whether or not anyone calls them an agent.

In the other direction, because the test is what an entity *does*, the fact sheet notes that online payment and administrative platforms that streamline admissions and payment workflows "would not generally fall within the definition" — a category that, in full disclosure, includes platforms like Qualy — unless education-agent activities get bolted on top.

### What counts as a commission

An **education agent commission**, in the Act's new definition, is *any consideration or benefit, whether monetary or non-monetary*, that is or will be given by or on behalf of a provider to an education agent (or an associate of the agent), and is *in connection with* recruiting overseas or intending overseas students, advising them about enrolment, or otherwise dealing with them. The fact sheet's list of what's captured is blunt: "fees, charges, commissions, bonuses, performance payments, gifts, discounted or free services, rewards and incentives." Its worked non-monetary examples include subsidised holidays taken as payment for recruitment, and free or discounted courses given to an agent who enrolled students.

So the plain-English answer to "does our marketing budget count?" is: **it can, and the statute is built so you should assume it does until you can show the payment isn't connected to dealing with students.** That inverts the old default, where silence meant safety.

Every word of consequence is in one phrase: **in connection with**. The rest of this article is about reading it correctly.

## The in-connection-with test: the line between brand and bounty

### The hinge: individual students

The single most useful sentence in the entire fact sheet is one almost no commentary has surfaced: *"More general activities that are not connected to any one individual overseas student or intending overseas student may fall outside of the definition."*

Read it twice. The hinge is **individual students**. A benefit that flows because students were recruited, advised or dealt with is commission. A benefit for genuinely general activity — building brand, representing the sector, an unattached campaign not keyed to enrolments — can sit outside. We'll call this the **in-connection-with line**. It's the framework worth memorising, because every marketing arrangement in your agent file sits on one side of it.

### Swap "travel" for "marketing" and you have your test

The Department gives a clean worked pair using travel that maps perfectly onto marketing spend. Subsidised travel for a *familiarisation visit before any recruitment* is **not** a commission. But subsidised travel *where the subsidy is part of an arrangement to undertake recruitment activities for one or more students* **is**. Swap "travel" for "marketing contribution" and you have your test. Fund a general market-awareness campaign with no enrolment hook and you're on the brand side. Top up an agent's marketing "because they sent forty students last intake" and you're paying a **commission top-up wearing a lanyard** — reportable, full stop.

### The anti-avoidance hammer

Then comes the anti-avoidance hammer, quoted verbatim because it's the sentence that should worry any provider tempted to relabel: *"Any providers who seek to obscure education agent commissions under the guise of other payments may be subject to appropriate regulatory action or penalties including where payments for other services are paid at rates significantly higher than market rates."*

Translation: calling it "marketing" doesn't launder it. Pay an agent $8,000 for a landing page that costs $1,000 to build and the Department has told you in advance the $7,000 gap looks like commission.

## The yes / no / maybe library

Here's the in-connection-with line applied to the marketing arrangements providers actually run, sorted into the only three answers that matter. This is a reading of how the definition and the Department's examples apply — a map, not legal advice, and not a rate card. Your specific contracts decide your specific outcomes.

| Arrangement | Verdict | What decides it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Per-enrolment "marketing bonus" that scales with student volume | **Yes — commission** | A performance payment with a marketing label; the more it tracks enrolments, the more certainly it's commission |
| Co-funding an agent's education-fair stand where they showcase your courses | **Yes — commission** | Counselling attending students at the stand is "dealing with" intending students |
| Paying for an agent's social campaign that drives applications to your courses | **Yes — commission** | The campaign exists to recruit students |
| Subsidised travel tied to recruiting one or more students | **Yes — commission** | The Department's own worked example |
| "Marketing fee" paid well above market rate for the actual deliverable | **Yes — commission** | The avoidance clause names this directly; the excess reads as disguised commission |
| Flat, genuinely untied brand-awareness grant — no enrolment target, no per-student trigger | **No — can sit outside** | The closest thing to the "general activities" carve-out |
| Familiarisation trip before any recruitment arrangement exists | **No — can sit outside** | Outside the definition, per the Department's example |
| General sector representation — a peak body or advocate at stakeholder level | **No — can sit outside** | Not dealing directly with your prospective students, so not even caught by the agent definition |
| Free or discounted software seats (a CRM, a portal) you give an agent | **Maybe** | Turns on whether the benefit supports the agent in dealing with *your* students |
| Co-branded landing page | **Maybe** | Brand if genuine general awareness; commission if it's an application funnel for your courses |
| Year-end "marketing support" with a vague deliverable | **Maybe** | The classic above-market-rate trap — decided by what was actually delivered, at what price |
| Event sponsorship | **Maybe** | A logo on a general industry event leans brand; sponsoring the agent's own recruitment event for your students leans commission |

### How to read the yes rows

The unifying tell: **the more a payment moves with enrolments, the more certainly it's a commission, whatever the invoice says.** Apply the zero-students question — *would this money still flow if the agent sent us no students?* If the honest answer is no, it's commission.

### How to read the no rows

The common thread: untied, flat, and survives the zero-students question. One caution on that test: it only condemns, it never acquits. Failing it makes a payment commission; passing it doesn't make a payment safe — an upfront fee under an arrangement to recruit next intake survives the question and is commission anyway, because "in connection with" reaches forward.

### How to read the maybes

For everything in this bucket, the description and the market-rate defensibility you can muster is what decides it — which is exactly why vague bookkeeping is now a liability.

## When the group owns both the school and the agent

Now the case the legislation was arguably written *for*: the vertically integrated group, where the same owners control a CRICOS provider and the agency that recruits for it. This is common — a college and its in-house or sister recruitment arm, or an education group that acquired its agent network — and it's where "marketing budget vs commission" stops being a labelling quibble and becomes a conflict-of-interest problem with its own rules.

### Three mechanics that bite groups specifically

First, the commission definition **expressly captures benefits given to an associate of the education agent**, and benefits paid by a third party on behalf of the provider. That's the anti-routing clause: you cannot make a per-student payment look like an internal transfer or a marketing allocation by sending it to a related company instead of "the agent." If the money is in connection with dealing with students, the corporate plumbing it flows through doesn't change its character.

Second, the **fit-and-proper provider test now explicitly weighs ownership and control** between providers and agents. Owning your own agent isn't prohibited — but it's now a fact the regulator assesses when deciding whether you're fit to hold CRICOS registration, and an intra-group "marketing fund" that's really an unreported commission becomes evidence in that assessment rather than a private accounting choice.

Third, there's a **notification duty**: a provider must notify the ESOS agency within 10 business days of a change in ownership or control links between the provider (or its associates) and an education agent (or the agent's associates). The Department also designed the agent definition with **no automatic exclusions** precisely so a captive entity, platform or related company can't be used to circumvent the intent. And the National Code still requires the agent to declare and take reasonable steps to avoid conflicts of interest — awkward when the agent and the provider share a boardroom.

### The strictest reading, not the most forgiving one

The practical upshot for groups: **intra-group marketing money gets the strictest reading, not the most forgiving one.** When recruiter and provider share owners, a regulator's natural prior is that payments between them are recruitment-related until shown otherwise, because the incentive to disguise commission as something else is structurally higher. If you run a group, the defensible posture is to document intra-group transfers at arm's length — real deliverables, market-referenced prices, no enrolment triggers — exactly as you would with an unrelated agent, and to keep the cross-ownership and conflict disclosures current. The group structure doesn't earn you a softer line; it earns you a brighter spotlight.

### The counter-intuitive turn: employment beats ownership

And yet — here's the counter-intuitive turn worth sitting with — **the same transparency regime may quietly push providers toward owning their recruitment, not away from it.** This is analysis, not a prediction, but the logic is clean. The historical case against vertical integration was partly reputational opacity: an arm's-length agent let a provider keep some distance from how students were recruited. The 2025 reforms demolish that distance for everyone — every provider must now disclose its agents, report commissions, and answer for agent conduct regardless of ownership. Once you're fully accountable either way, the marginal cost of bringing recruitment closer shrinks while the upside stays: you keep the 20–30% that would otherwise leave as commission, and you control conduct you're now liable for anyway.

But be precise about which structure buys you what, because **the Act draws its line at employment, not ownership.** Recruiters who are your permanent employees aren't education agents at all — the definition excludes them — so a genuinely in-house team exits the commission regime entirely: nothing to classify, nothing to report under section 21B. A sister agency exits nothing: it's a separate entity, so it remains an education agent, every benefit it receives stays captured, and all of the arm's-length documentation and cross-ownership disclosure above applies.

The fully-employed model trades that compliance load for payroll rigidity; the captive-agency model keeps the flexibility and inherits the brighter spotlight. We'd expect the better-capitalised groups to read the new transparency as one more reason to bring recruitment in-house — and the closer to actual employment they bring it, the more of the regime they leave behind.

## The question nobody can answer: what rate triggers it?

Here's the honest hole at the centre of the whole regime, and we'd rather name it than paper over it. **The Act sets no number.** There is no published multiple, no percentage, no safe harbour. The only test is the fact sheet's phrase — payments "at rates significantly higher than market rates" — and "significantly" is undefined. Nobody, including us, can tell you that 1.5x market is fine and 3x is fatal, because the Department hasn't said and the legislation doesn't.

### Three what-ifs, priced as market colour

So treat what follows as **market colour, not a rate card, and frame it as a what-if rather than a rule.** If a landing page from a competent freelancer runs, say, $800–$2,500, what does a $9,000 "landing page contribution" to a high-volume agent look like to a regulator reading the avoidance clause? If a shared booth at a source-market fair costs $3,000–$6,000 all-in, what's the story for a $25,000 "fair marketing partnership" with the agent who happens to be your top recruiter in that market? If a month of managed social ads is $1,500–$5,000 in media plus management, how does a flat $40,000 annual "social marketing fund" read when it isn't itemised against any media plan? These ranges are illustrative industry colour gathered from what these services normally cost as at June 2026, not statutory thresholds — but the gap between a defensible market price and what was actually paid is precisely the surface the Department told you it will look at.

The practical takeaway isn't a magic multiple. It's that **the burden of looking reasonable has shifted onto you.** The defensible position is a real deliverable, a market-referenced price you could point to, and a paper trail showing the spend wasn't keyed to enrolments. The indefensible position is a round number with no media plan, no scope, and a suspicious correlation to a particular agent's student count. You don't need to know the exact line to stay well clear of it.

### Two things on the horizon

Two things could firm this up. The fact sheet promises that providers "will be given additional resources" to assess whether specific payments are commissions when reporting is requested. And the Act itself orders an **independent review of the entire Schedule 1 regime within two years of commencement** — so the rate question should get official colour, if not an official answer, before the end of 2027.

## What "reportable" actually costs you

Being a commission doesn't make the payment illegal — agent commissions remain legal in Australia outside the onshore-transfer ban that applies from 31 March 2026. It makes the payment **visible**, and it puts a strict-liability offence behind getting the disclosure wrong.

### The section 21B mechanics

Under the new **section 21B**, the Secretary can issue a written request — at least 30 days' notice — for the total dollars given to each agent, the **value and description of non-monetary benefits**, and the number of accepted students each agent recruited; the request power is framed around commissions in connection with recruiting *accepted students* of the provider.

A provider that fails to comply commits an offence under **section 21B(7)** carrying **60 penalty units**, and subsection (8) makes it one of **strict liability** — the prosecution doesn't have to prove you intended to get it wrong, and the Department's fact sheet confirms incomplete information counts as non-compliance. At the Commonwealth penalty-unit value applying through mid-2026 ($330, indexed periodically), 60 units is roughly **$19,800** per offence.

And the fine isn't the whole of it: the fact sheet flags infringement notices and ESOS-agency regulatory action for non-compliance, giving false or misleading information in response is a separate offence under section 108, and all of it feeds the fit-and-proper consequences of looking like a provider that hides payments.

### Three consequences most coverage skips

First, **your competitors will be able to see the shape of these deals.** From 2026, providers gain access through PRISMS to de-identified commission and transfer data on *all* agents, not just their own. The quietly generous side arrangement nobody else knew about is a closing era.

Second, **the "description" requirement turns sloppy bookkeeping into exposure.** "Marketing support — $8,000" with no deliverable attached is exactly the entry that invites the above-market-rate question. A clean record — what was delivered, what it's worth, why it isn't keyed to enrolments — is your defence, and strict liability means you want that defence built *before* the request arrives, not reconstructed after.

Third, **the GST and FBT character of these benefits doesn't vanish because they're now also a regulatory line item.** A non-cash benefit you give still has a tax treatment; relabelling commission as marketing can distort your GST position as well as your ESOS reporting. That's an accountant conversation, but the new regime makes the underlying facts much harder to leave vague.

## Cost of doing business, or existential? Do the student math

Here's the question a hard-nosed commercial director will ask, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a wagged finger: **is a $19,800 penalty just a cost of doing business?** If a single agent's marketing side-deal reliably brings in, say, thirty extra enrolments a year at $30,000 tuition each, that's $900,000 of revenue against a sub-$20,000 fine. On that arithmetic, you'd pay the penalty and keep the deal. We don't encourage that calculus — but pretending nobody runs it is how compliance content loses credibility.

### Redo the math with the licence in the denominator

The reason the calculus is wrong isn't moral, it's structural: **for a CRICOS provider the cash penalty is the least of what's at stake.** Plug the same numbers into the real exposure. The 60-penalty-unit fine is the visible, bounded cost. Sitting behind it is the **fit-and-proper provider test**, which the 2025 reforms specifically strengthened to weigh ownership, control and integrity conduct — and which is the gate on your CRICOS registration itself. A pattern of payments dressed up to dodge reporting isn't a $19,800 problem; it's evidence in a fit-and-proper assessment that can suspend or cancel the registration the entire international arm depends on.

Now redo the math with that in the denominator. The thirty enrolments aren't weighed against a $20,000 fine — they're weighed against **every international enrolment the institution will ever take**, because a provider off CRICOS recruits no overseas students at all. There's no number of extra students from one agent's marketing deal that offsets losing the licence to enrol any of them. The penalty unit is a parking ticket; the accreditation risk is the repossession of the car. That asymmetry is deliberate — the Department built a modest fine on top of an existential regulatory consequence precisely so that the fine *can't* be rationalised as a line item.

So the honest answer to "will schools treat this as a cost of doing business?" is **no — not once they've done the real sum.** The cheap, boring, correct move is to classify and report accurately, and never let a marketing line accumulate into a pattern that a fit-and-proper review can read as a habit.

## How to keep marketing money clean

You don't need to abolish marketing contributions. You need to be able to answer, for each one: is this tied to students, and can I prove what it was and what it was worth?

In practice that means separating genuine brand work from per-student incentives in both the contract and the ledger; attaching a real deliverable and a market-referenced price to anything labelled marketing; never letting a "marketing bonus" scale with enrolment volume unless you're content to report it as the commission it plainly is; and keeping the description detailed enough to survive a cold read. If a payment can't survive the zero-students question, classify it as commission from the start and report it as such — that's the cheap outcome, not the expensive one.

### Two housekeeping moves

Two housekeeping moves close most of the remaining gap. First, re-read the marketing clauses in agent agreements signed before December 2025: the Secretary can only ask about benefits *given* after commencement, but a payment you make this month under a 2023 contract is fully in scope — legacy wording gets no grandfathering. Second, give the classification a home. The section 21B answer will come from finance, but the spend is booked by marketing, so the commission-or-marketing call has to be made at the moment of booking, not reconstructed at the moment of the request.

This is also, quietly, an argument for moving money in a way that's legible by default. Most of the grey in agent finance — what was paid, by whom, for which student, against which deliverable — exists because the money moves through bank transfers and spreadsheets that record amounts but never *reasons*. That's the gap [Qualy](/features/master-and-sub-agent-payments.md) is built to close: tuition and commission flow through one system that knows which payment belongs to which student, splits commission the moment funds clear, and gives provider and agent the same record — for a flat fee per payment, not a percentage. When the Secretary asks what you gave each agent and why, the answer should already be sitting in your account, line-itemed, not rebuilt from memory under a 30-day clock.

The line between marketing budget and commission isn't a private judgment call anymore. The statute draws it where money meets individual students — and "may fall outside" is all the comfort the Department offers the far side of it. Build your arrangements — and your records — so you always know which side you're on.

## Sources

- [Federal Register of Legislation — Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2025](https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2025A00074/asmade/text): the Act, Royal Assent 4 December 2025, including the new education-agent and education-agent-commission definitions, the section 21B reporting power and its 60-penalty-unit strict-liability offence (s21B(7)–(8)), and the two-year statutory review (section 4).
- [Federal Register of Legislation — National Code Amendment (Education Agent Commissions) Instrument 2026](https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2026L00033/asmade/text): the onshore-transfer commission ban, published January 2026 and applying from 31 March 2026.
- [Department of Education — 2025 Fact Sheet: Changes to requirements around education agents and commissions](https://www.education.gov.au/esos-framework/resources/2025-fact-sheet-education-agents-and-commissions): the commission definition, the "general activities" carve-out, the familiarisation-travel examples, and the above-market-rate avoidance warning quoted throughout.
- [Explanatory Memorandum — Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025](https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/elaaomb2025594/memo_0.html): the policy rationale behind the section 21B mechanics and the strict-liability framing.
- [ICEF Monitor — Australia passes integrity legislation; sharpens definition of agents and agent commissions](https://monitor.icef.com/2025/12/australia-passes-integrity-legislation-sharpens-definition-of-agents-and-agent-commissions/): trade-press summary of the sharpened definitions and reporting power.
- [ICEF Monitor — Australia introduces new rules restricting agent commissions for onshore student transfers](https://monitor.icef.com/2026/01/australia-introduces-new-rules-restricting-agent-commissions-for-onshore-student-transfers/): the related January 2026 National Code change banning onshore-transfer commissions.
- [ICEF Monitor — Australia moving to wider sharing of education agent data](https://monitor.icef.com/2026/02/australia-moving-to-wider-sharing-of-education-agent-data/): the PRISMS expansion that makes commission data visible to providers from 2026.
- [Department of Education — 2025 Fact Sheet: Changes to 'fit and proper provider' requirements](https://www.education.gov.au/esos-framework/resources/fit-and-proper-provider-requirements): the strengthened fit-and-proper test that ties integrity conduct and ownership/control to CRICOS registration.

## Frequently asked questions

### Does a marketing contribution to an agent count as an education agent commission in Australia?

It can. Under the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2025, an education agent commission is any monetary or non-monetary benefit a provider gives an agent in connection with recruiting, advising or otherwise dealing with overseas students. Marketing support tied to recruiting specific students is reportable commission. Genuinely general brand marketing not connected to any individual student may fall outside, but the law is structured so the provider should assume it counts until they can show it doesn't.

### Who has to report it — the school or the agent?

The registered provider. The 2025 law puts the obligation on providers — universities, RTOs delivering VET, and ELICOS colleges — to list their agents publicly, report agent details in PRISMS, and answer the Secretary's commission requests under section 21B. The agent files nothing. The penalty for incomplete or late reporting falls on the provider, which is why classifying your own marketing spend correctly is a provider compliance task, not an agent one.

### What is the test for whether marketing money is a commission?

The phrase that decides it is "in connection with." If the marketing benefit flows because the agent recruited, advised or dealt with particular students, it is a commission. The Department's fact sheet says "general activities that are not connected to any one individual overseas student may fall outside of the definition." A reliable gut check: would this money still flow if the agent sent you zero students? If no, it is commission regardless of the invoice label — though passing the test does not by itself clear a payment.

### What marketing rate is too high before it looks like disguised commission?

There is no published number. The Act sets no multiple, percentage or safe harbour. The only test is the fact sheet's phrase — payments "at rates significantly higher than market rates" — and "significantly" is undefined. Practically, the burden has shifted to the provider to show a real deliverable at a defensible, market-referenced price. A round figure with no scope, no media plan, and a suspicious correlation to one agent's student count is the profile that invites scrutiny.

### Can we just call a commission "marketing" to avoid reporting it?

No, and the Department named this exact tactic. The fact sheet warns that providers who "obscure education agent commissions under the guise of other payments" face regulatory action, "including where payments for other services are paid at rates significantly higher than market rates." Paying $8,000 for a $1,000 landing page doesn't launder the gap. And because the section 21B reporting offence is strict liability, intent is not a defence — incomplete or late information is enough.

### What is the penalty for getting the reporting wrong?

Under section 21B, a provider that fails to comply with the Secretary's written request commits an offence carrying 60 penalty units, and the relevant provision is strict liability. At the Commonwealth penalty-unit value as at June 2026 ($330, indexed periodically), that is roughly $19,800 per offence, before any flow-on fit-and-proper or registration consequences. Strict liability means the prosecution need not prove you intended to under-report — incomplete or late information is itself the offence.

### When did these rules start?

The Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 4 December 2025, with provisions commencing 5 December 2025. The Secretary can only request information about commissions received on or after commencement, so arrangements from December 2025 onward are in scope. The related National Code change banning commissions on onshore transfers was published in January 2026 and applies from 31 March 2026.

### Is a flat annual brand-awareness grant reportable?

It is the arrangement most likely to fall outside the definition, but only if it is genuinely untied — no enrolment target, no per-student trigger, and a real general-marketing purpose. That is the closest thing to the fact sheet's "general activities" carve-out. The moment the grant scales with student volume, is conditioned on recruitment, or funds activity aimed at your prospective students, it crosses the in-connection-with line and reads as commission.

### How does this work if our group owns both the school and the agent?

It gets the strictest reading, not a softer one. The commission definition expressly captures benefits given to an associate of the agent and benefits routed through a third party, so you cannot dress a per-student payment as an internal transfer or intra-group marketing fund. The 2025 fit-and-proper test now weighs provider-agent ownership and control, and a change in those links must be notified within 10 business days. The one true exit is employment, not ownership: permanent employees are not education agents, so a genuinely in-house recruitment team — unlike a sister agency — sits outside the commission regime.

### Does this apply to VET and ELICOS providers or only universities?

It applies to all CRICOS-registered providers, which includes RTOs delivering VET courses and ELICOS English-language colleges, not just universities. The agent and commission definitions are sector-neutral and activity-based. If anything, the higher commission rates common in the VET and ELICOS sectors — often 20–30% — mean marketing-style side payments are more prevalent there, so the classification question bites harder for those providers.

### Are agent commissions still legal in Australia?

Yes. The 2025 integrity law makes commissions transparent and reportable; it does not ban them generally. There is one specific prohibition: from 31 March 2026, providers cannot pay commission for onshore transfers where a student moves on without completing the course for which their visa was granted; students accepted for enrolment on or before that date are carved out. Outside that, commissions — including marketing-style benefits — remain legal. They simply have to be recorded accurately and, on request, reported.

### Is the penalty just a cost of doing business?

No, once you do the real sum. The 60-penalty-unit fine (about $19,800) looks small against the revenue a productive agent generates, and a purely financial view might rationalise it. But the cash penalty is the least of the exposure. ESOS integrity breaches feed the fit-and-proper provider test, which the 2025 reforms strengthened and which gates your CRICOS registration. The genuine downside isn't a fine — it's suspension or loss of the registration that lets you enrol any overseas students at all.

## Related articles

- [How education agent commissions work: rates, gross vs net, and getting paid on time](/blog/how-education-agent-commissions-work.md)
- [Sharing Your Commission with Your Counselors: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly](/blog/sharing-your-education-agency-commission-with-counselors.md)
- [The Discount Dilemma for Education Agents](/blog/discount-dilemma-education-agents.md)

## More on Qualy

**Industries**

- [For schools](/international-education/for-schools.md) — For international education schools
- [For agents](/international-education/for-education-agents.md) — For international education agents

**Support**

- [Training](/training.md)
- [System status](https://qualyhq.statuspage.io/) — Qualy system status
- [Product updates](https://changelog.qualyhq.com) — As we work on Qualy, here we spotlight what we’ve learned and updated across our products
- [Contact](/contact-us.md)

**Product**

- [Demo](/demo.md)
- [Enterprise](/enterprise.md)
- [Testimonials](/testimonials.md) — Learn what some customers have to say about Qualy
- [About](/about.md) — Learn about Qualy's mission and values
- [Blog](/blog) — International education payments blog by Qualy
- [Trust center](/trust.md)
- [API](/api.md) — Qualy API for international education payments
- [Zapier](/zapier.md) — Connect Qualy to 7,000+ apps with Zapier
- [NexPay](/nexpay.md) — Qualy + NexPay — automate everything around the payment

**Legal**

- [General terms](/terms-and-conditions.md)
- [Payer terms](/terms-for-payers.md)
- [Privacy policy](/privacy-policy.md)
- [BECS DDR](/becs-dd-service-agreement.md)