A camera fine in the company's name: how to nominate the driver

A camera-detected fine goes to the vehicle's registered owner, so a company vehicle means the business is liable until it nominates the driver. Nominate online or by statutory declaration before the due date on the notice, supplying the driver's full name, address, date of birth and licence number. Fail to nominate and the business pays the higher corporate rate.

Why did the fine arrive addressed to the business?

Camera-detected offences run on owner onus. The camera photographs a number plate, not a face, so the notice goes to whoever the vehicle is registered to. If that is your company, the company wears it until someone tells the issuing authority who was behind the wheel.

Revenue NSW puts the obligation plainly: companies are required by law to nominate the driver of a company vehicle at the time of a camera detected offence, and penalties apply to companies that fail to.

There is a reason states push so hard. Demerit points can only be recorded against a person. An un-nominated fine leaves the offence attached to nobody, so the states price that outcome high enough that nominating is always the cheaper path.

What does it cost to not nominate?

Every state runs the same basic trade: nominate and the fine drops to the individual rate, or stay silent and pay the corporate one.

The other states and territories run their own version of the same process. The date that binds you is the one printed on your notice, not a rule of thumb, so read it before it goes in the pile.

Victoria is unusually explicit about why the company amount is set where it is: the higher amount exists to encourage the company to nominate the person who was driving, so that demerit points can be applied to their licence. Nominate and the business gets a new fine in the driver’s name, with a new due date, at the much lower individual rate.

What details does a nomination actually need?

This is where most small businesses come unstuck. You cannot nominate from memory — you need identifying details for a specific person.

NSW asks for the driver’s:

• full name
• address
• date of birth
• driver licence number, and the state or country the licence was issued in
• passport number and country of issue, if the driver is an international licence holder

Victoria asks for full name, address, driver licence number and date of birth. Queensland’s declaration needs the full name and address of whoever was driving or in charge of the vehicle at the time.

Then there is who is allowed to sign. In NSW an authorised person from the company has to make the nomination, and you may be asked for the Transport for NSW customer number from the vehicle’s registration certificate. In Queensland the nominator must hold a valid position title — director, manager, secretary, or a title containing “executive officer” or “chief officer”. A leading hand who knows exactly who had the van cannot lodge it.

If you name the driver, don’t pay the fine. Paying it closes the matter — in NSW you then have 90 days from the date the fine was served to nominate, and only if you paid before the reminder notice was issued.

What if nobody can remember who had the ute?

The obvious move is to look at the photo. It usually does not help. Revenue NSW notes that camera images are taken to capture the vehicle’s number plate, so the driver may not be visible.

The fallback is worse than it sounds. Revenue NSW’s guidance is that where there are insufficient records, the company must satisfy that it has thoroughly investigated and made significant attempts to determine the driver responsible. That is not a box you tick. It is a burden that lands on the person who did not keep the records.

Revenue NSW may also ask for supporting documents or information to prove who the driver was at the time of the offence. Which means the real question is not “who do we think it was” but “what can we show”.

What actually proves who was driving?

Nothing here is a legal standard — the issuing authority decides what satisfies it. But in practice the evidence a small fleet can produce falls into a short list:

• A vehicle allocation or sign-out record showing who had that rego on that date
• Trip records with a timestamp and a route that matches the offence location
• A job or roster record placing that person at that site
• Fuel card, toll tag or site sign-in data for the same window

The pattern is the same in each case: something written down at the time, not reconstructed three weeks later. Revenue NSW’s own recommendation is that companies maintain vehicle logbooks to correctly identify the drivers of their vehicles.

How late is too late?

Late nomination is not a soft deadline. In NSW you have until the due date on the fine reminder notice. Nominate after that and you may cop a fine for failing to nominate within a reasonable time, plus an overdue fine. You can still lodge it, but Revenue NSW may refuse to accept a late nomination.

Victoria draws a harder line: once the fine progresses to Notice of Final Demand stage it is too late to nominate, and the company is liable at the higher amount. Queensland’s nominations take a standard 14 days to process from the day they are received, so a nomination posted on day 27 is cutting it fine.

Guessing to beat the clock is the worst option available. In Victoria, falsely nominating someone can mean a fine of more than $10,000 and a suspended licence, and the fine is higher again for a company that gives false information.

When can you not nominate at all?

Two cases, both worth knowing before you start filling in forms:

• The fine was handed to a named driver in person at the roadside. That is a direct-issue notice, not an owner-onus one
• The offence was not detected by a camera

Neither can be transferred. The person on the ticket is the person on the hook.

How do you make the next one a two-minute job?

If one person drives one ute, a spreadsheet is fine and always has been. The problem starts at three or four vehicles that get shared — a van someone grabs for a run to the supplier, a ute that changes hands mid-week. That is when “who had it on the 14th” turns into a group chat.

The fix is boring: record the allocation when it happens, not when the notice arrives. In Axlerun, drivers claim a vehicle from a shared pool at the start of a shift, so trips land against whoever was actually behind the wheel — and a fine recorded against a vehicle can be assigned to the driver who was on duty at the time, which turns a nomination into a lookup. Recording trips and allocating drivers is free on the Drive plan; assigning fines to the driver on duty sits on Cruise.

It is the same habit that stops the other expensive surprise on a shared vehicle. Knowing who pays when the rego has expired matters less if you catch the expiry before anyone drives it.

A nomination is only ever as good as the record you kept before the camera flashed.

Before you file the next notice, check three things:

• The date the nomination window closes, taken off the notice itself
• Whether the person signing holds a title the state will accept
• Whether you could produce that driver’s licence number today

If any of the three is a no, that is the thing to fix — not the fine.

This is general information about what state authorities require, not legal advice. For a specific notice, check the instructions printed on it or talk to your solicitor.