Gillard takes aim at self-employed



Tucked away in the torrent of detail in the 2011 federal budget is a dirty deal between the Gillard government and the unions designed to shaft a growing group that unions fear: the self-employed.

In this case the gun is carried by the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten, a former national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, former member of the executive of the ACTU, and former member of the board of the Labor front group GetUp. On Tuesday Shorten issued a deceptively bland press release which said, in part: "Some contractors appear to be unaware of their existing tax obligations or deliberately under-reporting their tax. The government will therefore introduce a requirement for certain businesses in the building and construction industry to report to the Australian Taxation Office annually on payments made to contractors in the industry … This will help ensure a more level playing field within the building and construction industry and improve voluntary compliance."

The new rule being introduced by Shorten will impose a grave and gratuitous administrative burden on small business operators and the self-employed. It appears to require that anyone in the construction industry who hires a contractor will have to report to the Tax Office every payment to that contractor. Every contractor, in turn, will have to report the detail of every payment they make to any other contractors.

"They are deliberately creating an administrative nightmare," said Phillips. "The Gillard government is moving to tie up contract work in so much red tape and complexity that the practical ability to be self-employed will evaporate. They want people to be employees, not self-employed."

In a separate punitive measure, the government has also targeted the smallest of small businesses: one-person operations reporting business income of less than $50,000 a year. The government is removing the 25 per cent tax offset these business operators receive. It will affect about 400,000 self-employed.

These measures follow a pattern of shoring up union power since Labor won office, as it repaid its union paymasters. The government has re-regulated the job market via the Fair Work Act. It has increased the scope of the award system. It has expanded the industrial tribunals system, setting up a new layer of bureaucracy and litigation called Fair Work Australia.

All these measures have the effect of being both job-creation retardants and inflation accelerants.

SOURCE

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them