The major changes in business likely to impact you are as follows
Company Tax Rate Cuts
Approximately 800,000 business will benefit from the reduced tax cut of 1.5% to 28.5% from 1 July 2015 to help boost businesses profitability.
However, big businesses (3,000 biggest companies in Australia) will miss out on this benefit, as the government aims to impose a 1.5% levy to fund its paid parental leave scheme.
Legal Reform in the area of Unfair Contract terms
Small business will also see the introduction of legal reform in the area of unfair contract terms. At present, small businesses are left at a disadvantage in the application of unfair contractual terms, where big business capitalise on their size to force acceptance of unfair terms, or the small business misses out on winning the contract. Although this reform is yet to be fleshed out, it will see similar protection as afforded to small businesses which is afforded to consumers under the Australian Consumer Law, a positive and welcomed relief.
Increased funding for Export
In an exciting announcement for our Australian Exporters, the budget brings a funding boost of $250million to existing programs, which aim to assist Australian businesses with viable exporting opportunities.
$200m will be injected into the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, who works directly with businesses and their banks to provide funding and insurance products. This allows a business who sees an exporting opportunity access to funding support, through loans, guarantees etc
The Export Market Development Grants provide key support for businesses that are expanding to develop new export markets, including the reimbursement of eligible export promotion expenditure, and will see a $50m funding injection. This means that businesses looking at exporting opportunities will continue to have access to these grants.
Changes to ATO & ASIC
The Federal Government have slashed funding to the Australian Tax Office and Australian Securities and Investments Commission, as well as announcing scoping studies into privitatising ASIC’s registry function. The ATO will see a cut of $142m over three years beginning from 2015, as well as cutting staff levels by 4700 over 5 years and ASIC’s funding will be cut by $120 million over five years. It is not yet clear how these funding cuts will impact on the regulatory functions of these bodies, but it is likely we will see these agencies adjust their priorities of enforcement and regulation on businesses.
Mature aged workers
A new key grants scheme for Employers will be introduced from 1 July 2014, In order to stimulate employment for mature aged employees. Businesses will now be entitled to grants up to $10,000 for employing a person 50 years or older, called the ‘Restart Program”.
These grants are only available if the following conditions are met:
- The job is sustainable and ongoing
- The job is new and is not simply the result of the displacement of existing company workers
- The potential employer was previously unemployed for a period of 6 years or more
- The potential employee is employed for a period of six months or greater.
These grants will be payable in stages based on the length of employment, with $3,000 payable upfront, $3000 after 12 months, $2,000 after 18 months with the final payment of $2,000 on the second year anniversary of employment.
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