Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Hansard source

Treasurer Costello has done that for five years and when Labor leader Kevin Rudd in his National Press Club speech unveiled BAS Easy, which is a variation of an earlier ratio method that I developed, the Treasurer condemned that too. In an article in the Australian Financial Review titled ‘Costello sour on BAS sweetener’ it was reported that the Treasurer thought this was not worthy of support. Yet in the budget he has pretended to extend the simplified accounting method to a range of businesses and has actually said that any business that has a mixture of GST and non-GST sales and/or GST and non-GST purchases can now go to the tax office and ask the tax office to issue it a ratio. That sounds like the ratio method to me; that sounds like BAS Easy to me. But the Treasurer, just two weeks before the budget, had been reported in the newspaper as being sour on a BAS sweetener. So it does raise this question: is this just another example of political expediency? If this government were to be re-elected—and heaven forbid that—will the Treasurer instruct the tax office to issue a completely unfavourable ratio to any such business that applies, therefore relegating it back to the position of having to do all of the BAS bookkeeping?

Surveys conducted by MYOB identify the bookkeeping requirements of the BAS, the business activity statement, as the No. 1 bugbear of small business. The minister for small business interjected earlier saying, ‘The big issue is unfair dismissals.’ It is strange that small business report consistently that its No. 1 bugbear is the bookkeeping requirements of doing the BAS. Let us humanise this. This is often work that is done by the spouse of a tradesman—a woman who has parenting obligations as well. She is home on weekends doing hour after hour of BAS bookkeeping. And what does this government do? It completely dismisses—

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