“Protect, Promote, Provide”
Continuing our theme of (put me to sleep?) summer holiday tax reading
Monday, January 14, 2019
Goodness. We had lots of people respond to our last news alert of (boring) summer tax reading. So we thought we’d enliven your summer reading even more! This time it’s the submission we made to Treasury in its review of Australian Business Numbers..... MoreHere’s some really interesting (not?) holiday reading
Monday, January 7, 2019
As the new business year slowly winds back up, we thought it appropriate to highlight some recent submissions about the ATO that we made to the government and parliament before Christmas... More What’s been happening in the construction sector for the self-employed?
Thursday, December 27, 2018
The construction sector has high numbers of self-employed, independent contractors, but it’s an area that has always attracted significant controversy.
While the industry is in holiday shutdown we thought subbies might have a minute or two to catch up on new enforcement processes important to their businesses ... MoreCriminal justice vs Tax Justice. Are the two the same?
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
In what would seem a rather startling revelation in The Australian yesterday, Robert Gottliebsen comments that, pending an explanation, in his view “…as it now stands, there is one law for the alleged criminals and another for law-abiding, taxpaying people...." MoreMore SEA News...
We monitor self-employment news from around the world. Full list here.
Big breakthrough in ATO treatment of small business people
Coalition government announces Small Business Tax Tribunal. This is a hugely important breakthroughKey features:
- Be totally separate from ATO.
- Not involve lawyers.
- Appoint a case manager to support the taxpayer.
- Make decisions within 28 days of a hearing.
- Require a payment of $500 from the taxpayer for each appeal.
- If the ATO appeals the AAT decisions to the Federal Court, the ATO will pay the small businesses’ reasonable costs.
- If there are test cases where lawyers are used, the ATO pays for the taxpayers’ lawyers.
Our commentary here. Full story here. This includes history of our campaigning, submissions, case studies, etc.
Defend the right to be self-employed
Public sector bureaucracies along with unions are wanting to close down the right to be self-employed. We have seen these attacks before such as:
- Contractors are ‘dependent’.
- Sham contracting is rife.
See our responses on these arguments in 2011. See our success at the International Labour Organisation in 2006.
And now the new attack is against the ‘gig economy’. We have new campaigns on our hands!
Self-employment challenges managerial orthodoxy
The supposed ‘rise’ of the ‘gig’ economy is causing much debate on whether its impacts are good or evil for society. But that debate is not new. In 2005, SEA's Executive Director, Ken Phillips, published his challenging book, Independence and the Death of Employment, in which he examined the fundamental changes that were occurring, even then, in the way we work and how notions about independence and the role of the commercial contract were fundamental to them. The Introduction to the book is available here. Recent arguments about the ‘gig’ economy have refired that debate.
Is your contract fair?
SEA can rightly claim huge success in achieving Unfair Contract protections for small business people. New protective legislation came into effect in November 2016—a world's first for self-employed people. Resources for checking your own contract are here.Join Self Employed Australia
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