Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Small- and medium-size businesses are driving jobs growth in Australia. Right now 70 per cent of all employees across Australia are employed in a small- or medium-sized business. These are real jobs in real industries.

For example, 96 per cent of employees in agriculture are employed by a small- and medium-size enterprise, and 84 per cent of construction workers and 80 per cent of employees in professional services are employed by a small- or medium-size enterprise. Most of the employment growth is generated by small- to medium-size business.

In this budget, we are building on the measures that we initiated in last year's budget, providing further tax cuts to small- and medium-size business by lifting the turnover threshold for small-and medium-size business accessing various tax benefits from $2 million to $10 million from 1 July 2016. This means that all businesses with a turnover of less than $10 million can access tax incentives available to small business. This means 870,000 businesses employing 3.4 million Australians will have their tax rate reduced.