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

The reason for the government’s decision to oppose BAS Easy is now clear. The Assistant Treasurer has conveyed to this parliament his ignorance of the proposal. He has said that this proposal of the Labor Party would create new changes and extra challenges for small business. Since when did an option create those sorts of complications? It has been made clear time and time again in our public statements that BAS Easy is an option. If, as the minister asserts, small businesses are deliriously happy with spending many hours a week doing the GST bookkeeping, and have nothing else to do with their time, then they can stay with the existing system. We have made that perfectly clear.

What Labor is doing is providing an extra option—an option based on taking snapshots twice a year, once in the first half of the year and once in the second half of the year. This should sound familiar, even to the minister, because it is an adaptation of the simplified accounting methods. Those simplified accounting methods were first introduced not long after the GST was introduced but they were limited to a very small range of businesses—that is, mixed food retailers. The purpose of extending the simplified accounting methods to other businesses was to give them the option of taking the benefit. They do not have to if they do not want to. If they are as happy as Larry or as happy as the minister says they are, fine; they can stay with the existing system. What is wrong with an option?

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