Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is becoming increasingly clear that this government is not only not on side with small business, it actually sees small business as the soft touch it needs to create the fiction-and-fudge surplus the Treasurer is so fond of talking about. Many people in this chamber and many listening would not be aware that, in the last financial year, the number of small business insolvencies instigated by the Australian Taxation Office went up by 116 per cent. On top of that, the Taxation Commissioner has signalled that he will go even harder this financial year. This sits alongside a recent report from the Inspector-General of Taxation that highlighted the heavy powers available to the tax office to cajole, threaten and intimidate small businesses into accepting default assessments—even where they might be wrong. We have seen go-away money in the workplace relations system; there is now go-away money happening in the tax system.

As the inspector-general highlighted, most small businesses have neither the resources, the funding nor the time to take on the tax office over an amended assessment. It is a scandal that this government, after being of no assistance whatsoever to small business since their election, now sees small business people as a soft target in trying to come up with some papered over arrangement for its budget black hole and the $120 billion it is yet to find for the election commitments and promises it has made. It is well past time for the small business community to have a government in Canberra that is on their side and supporting their success, instead of one targeting them as a soft touch. (Time expired)