All News

As the enormity of the Coronavirus contagion sinks in, a rapid adjustment to what’s needed to survive is taking hold.

First is everyone’s health. We are in the hands of the health professionals and simply will do as they advise.

Second is to do the best we can to look after our collective and individual financial well-being. None of us will avoid financial pain, but some will feel (and are feeling) the hurt more than others. The more we pull together the stronger we will all be.  More...

We started our campaign against ‘reverse factoring’ in October last year. That’s the ‘game’ that large businesses play where they delay paying their small business suppliers. Then they say ‘oh we know a friendly financier who will lend you the money we’re not paying you!’ What a scam!

In November last year we called for reverse factoring to be stamped out. Here’s my YouTube comment from Parliament House.  More...

We’ve been pretty quiet during January on issuing news alerts. That’s because we’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for 2020. This year we’re making a big push for key reform issues for self-employed small business people. The timing is right because there is heightened political interest in small business issues.

Our 2020 campaign agenda has three key targets, all to do with small business people receiving a fair deal: More...

Last Thursday (14 March), the current Australian Taxation Commissioner delivered a major speech.

He said of himself: More...

Well here’s a turn-up for us! In 2000 (goodness, 18 years ago!) we formed Independent Contractors Australia to advocate for the rights of self-employed people. And in that time we’ve been more successful than we could have envisaged. More...

It looks like truly good news. The ‘big end of town’, through the Business Council of Australia, last week launched a new small business ‘pay on time’ code. That is, big businesses signing up to the code have agreed to pay small business suppliers on time. And the Council of Small Business of Australia (COSBA) has endorsed the code.

Let’s be clear. It appears that BCA has moved on the code because the Victorian government has implemented one, the Federal Small Business Ombudsman, Kate Carnell, has been pushing for one and the ‘big end of town’ doesn’t want to see legislation forcing them on this.   More...

Remember the 7-Eleven scandal? That’s the one where employees of 7-Eleven stores were underpaid and scammed. To stop this, the Federal government is now introducing legislation to make franchisors jointly responsible with franchisees for underpayment of franchisee employees. It will protect workers. It’s good legislation.

But the Franchise Council of Australia (FCA) wants to kill this off.   More...

Readers may have noticed the somewhat messy outcome with the Federal Government’s ABCC legislation last week. The key killer is that the associated federal construction code will not have application for two years. That means that big construction firms will have two years to continue to collude with unions to screw over small business construction subcontractors.  Here’s commentary from Judith Sloan in The Australian showing why it’s a mess.
 
But riding in from the West is a different player! More...

You may remember the ATO was calling to have scrutiny of its behaviour curtailed and a Parliamentary Inquiry was conducting hearings. We put in a submission saying “no way! The ATO can’t be a law unto itself. It needs to be scrutinized, particularly for small business people.”

Fortunately, good sense has prevailed. Just before the election was called the Parliamentary Committee released its report. The Committee recommended continuing ATO scrutiny. That’s absolutely essential if small business people are to receive some chance of fair treatment from the ATO.  More...

The Australian Tax Commissioner has been complaining to the Treasurer that the ATO is subject to too much scrutiny. At first, we at ICA thought this was a joke! But no, a parliamentary committee is reviewing whether the ATO needs less scrutiny.

We’re staggered and so we’re responding. We’ve put in a submission saying that, in relation to treatment of small business people, the ATO needs more scrutiny, not less. It’s a long submission but it needs to be.  More...