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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...

Last week we reported on Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ agenda to make being your own boss illegal. Now’s there’s more evidence.

With the second big lockdown being imposed in Melbourne, Chairman Dan (as the cartoonists like to show him) has offered support packages for small businesses. But it’s not available for self-employed people. It’s discriminatory. Many are suffering according to this ABC report and will go broke because of this second lockdown. More...

Yesterday the Victorian Labor government released its report into the ‘gig economy.’ The 228-page report should be read as a declaration of war against self-employed, small business people across Victoria, and Australia. This is so because a key recommendation calls for laws that would effectively make self-employment illegal.  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 anti-Trump forces in the USA have just suffered a surprise defeat in a Californian bye-election that has likely implications for the November US Presidential election.

The Democrats suffered a massive backlash against them because of vicious anti-small business laws that have crushed the self-employed small business sector in California. 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...

Ouch! More than a quarter of arts workers have lost their jobs during the Coronavirus lockdown. And with so much of arts activity dependent on crowding together, stopping further arts job losses seems complex. Health officials in government are understandably scared of the mosh pit and the possible spread of disease, for example. More...

There’s media speculation doing the rounds that the JobKeeper scheme could be cut back.

Our assessment is that it would be political suicide for Prime Minister Morrison if the government took such a move. The PM is running high in the polls over his handling of Coronavirus, a dramatic turnaround from the political disaster that he and the government suffered during the bushfire crisis earlier in the year. More...