Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison famously coined the tourism slogan, “Where the bloody hell are you?” Coalition voters, especially small businesses, ought to be asking, “Scott Morrison, what the bloody hell are you thinking?”
Morrison’s Liberal party have long been regarded as the party of small business and entrepreneurship. Driving the point home, Labor lost the May election in large part due to then-shadow treasurer Chris Bowen’s plans to impose a raft of red tape and taxes on everyone from small business to self-funded retirees.
So why the bloody hell is Scott Morrison letting Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar steam ahead with a crazy attack on small and medium businesses?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Minister for employment and small business Michaelia Cash keep saying that the current government is about encouraging entrepreneurism […] but they have been completely white-anted by Michael Sukkar. So, in fact, Scott Morrison leads a government whose actions are reverse of what he and Cash are saying.
Thanks to Michael Sukkar, the Morrison government actually plans to make running business much riskier and has added a mountain of new regulations. The first chapter of Sukkar’s regulations covers some 60 pages and around 20,000 words. But that’s just the start […]
The Sukkar plan[’s] […] aim is to create circumstances that give the Australian Taxation Office wide powers to undertake its own estimates of a company’s GST and make directors personally liable to pay that AT0 estimate. It’s a world first.
Even worse, Sukkar’s plan will bypass every other regulatory check, from the courts to the small business tax tribunal.
Under the Sukkar rules the ATO has total power. It is investigator, prosecutor judge and executioner. The Sukkar plan in the 60-page set of regulations sets out a series of “don’ts”, or actions that are dangerous:
• DON’T sell assets when there are signs of trouble. When businesses are under pressure, selling assets is currently a prudent action. Under “Sukkarism”, if your enterprise fails, those assets sales could trigger the ATO calculating your GST and making you personally liable.
• DON’T appoint a director whose business has previously failed because it could trigger the AT0 powers if troubles arise. In a vibrant society a person who experiences non-fraud failure can be very valuable. Sukkarism smells of the debtor prisons of the Dickensian era.
• DON’T backdate the appointment of a director. It should not happen, but entrepreneurial families have busy lives and accountants often backdate meetings It’s a harmless exercise that cuts red tape. Under the Sukkar plan, it is high-risk
• DON’T transfer employees to a new company under the same effective control. This is a direct attack on our farming community, where such family practices are part of succession planning.
• DON’T rely too much on senior management or outsiders, or they could become a concealed shadow or de facto director and be a trigger for ATO action.
The glossy brochures selling this Labor-lite dog of a plan, try to fob off business owners by waffling that the ATO will be all reason and sweetness when it is handed these extraordinary powers, and won’t abuse them, honest.
If you believe that, I’ve got shares in the Sydney Harbour Bridge to sell you.
The government has been publicly warned by the judiciary of the bad behaviour of the ATO. A senior federal court judge, Justice Logan, raised the possibility of charges being laid against the taxation commissioner for the bad behaviour of his department […] The ATO’s practices have been blasted by the small business ombudsman Kate Carnell and the Inspector General of Taxation. Given these warnings, it is almost unbelievable that the Sukkar plan would be high on the government’s legislative program.
Besides the gross idiocy of hammering small and medium businesses in this way, Sukkar’s plan is also risking political suicide.
The ALP now realises that Michael Sukkar could be the Morrison government’s Chris Bowen — a well-meaning minister/shadow minister who surrounds himself with people who give him bad advice.
Bowen’s bad advice on franking credits cost Bill Shorten the election. It will take about two years for Sukkarism to have its impact. Which will bring us up to around the time of the next federal election.
theaustralian.com.au/business/economics/assistant-treasurer-michael-sukkars-plan-allows-the-ato-to-attack-small-business
Time for Morrison to tell Sukkar to pull his head in.