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Our campaign to reform the ATO continues. Good grief it’s an exhausting process! But the ATO keeps demonstrating why the reform is needed because the ATO keeps behaving badly.

Today we’re highlighting another case of ATO bad behaviour.

Many small businesses are structured as trusts. Most are family trusts. The ‘beneficiaries’ of such trusts are typically family members. A trust can distribute profits to the beneficiaries who then pay the tax.  More...

As we look to 2021 to be a better year than 2020, perhaps one of the shocks of Covid-19 has been how quickly our freedoms and liberty have been crushed under the weight of health dictates. It’s been done for our own good—that is, to keep us all safe from a silent, unseen enemy killer.

With luck, we will emerge from the Covid crisis this year with freedoms being returned. One fear, however, is that once governments, whether of left or right persuasion, taste the seductive power of authoritarianism, they become addictively hooked. There’s nothing some bureaucrats love more than the scent of their own power first thing in the morning. More...

Here’s an ATO story that might interest you.

On Friday last, 6 November, the Australian Taxation Office had a serious legal bomb blow up in its face. It’s so serious that the full bench of the Federal Court has put a ten-day embargo on the publication of the judgment that went against the ATO. We can only guess why. However, the case, the facts and the implications are known. More...

At Self-Employed Australia we’ve been campaigning for a heck of a long time for reform of the ATO in the way it handles disputes—particularly with small business people. In the economic recovery from Covid, reform of the ATO must assume high importance.

Fair treatment of taxpayers is essential and this is not occurring if you find yourself in dispute with the ATO. The tax administration laws and the tax system are ‘stacked’ to enable the ATO to abuse its powers. This is bad for society and the economy.  More...

Last week (22 July) the Morrison government announced that JobKeeper and JobSeeker are being extended past the current cut-off of at the end of September. But there are changes to eligibility and the amounts being paid.

We’ve waited a week to produce this update to check some details with the ATO. Be aware that the legislation for the extension has not passed Parliament, so our summary below is the best information available at the moment. More...

The Senate is currently considering a Bill that will require large businesses to report their payments to small business suppliers. Being paid on time is a top priority for all self-employed small business people.

We gave evidence to the Senate last week (8 July) and made the following points.

We expect the Morrison government to fully implement its election promise on pay-on-time issues. This is a three-phase promise it made, namely: More...

Last week, we reported the release by the ATO of threats to treat people who’ve accessed JobKeeper (and other programs) of being tax fraudsters. The problem, we say, is the ability of the ATO’s auditors to apply their ‘view’ as to fraud, which then becomes ‘fact’ at law, subject to prosecution. And the only effective appeal is to the ATO itself!!  More...

We can’t believe that, for all the great work the ATO has done with implementing the Covid-19 support packages, it's decided to blow up that good work.

Last week (23 June) the ATO released a statement ‘ATO zeroes in on COVID-19 fraud’. The ATO has declared that it reckons lots of Australians are committing fraud in applying for Covid-19 support (JobKeeper, Cash Flow Boost, early release of super, etc.) But look at what they are targeting. More...

The Australian Taxation Office has been subject to heavy criticism following its announcement last Friday (22 May) that the JobKeeper program will cost $60 billion less than the predicted $130 billion.

In other words, the government’s (Treasury and ATO) original prediction is wrong, that some 6.5 million Australians will need JobKeeper support. Instead they now say around 3.5 million will need JobKeeper. This could be good news.  More...

We’ve had lots of people contacting us confused as to when they will receive the JobKeeper payment. We’ve checked with the ATO.

***You will NOT receive JobKeeper payments from the ATO if you don’t fill out the necessary online form.

The online form became available on Monday (4 May 2020). More...